“Cloisters, ancient libraries … I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.”

We don’t see it, and because we don’t see it this means that there is no period so remote as the recent past.

The Waste Land not figuring very largely in Mam’s scheme of things. “The thing is,” I said finally, “he won the Nobel Prize.” “Well,” she said, with that unerring grasp of inessentials which is the prerogative of mothers, “I’m not surprised. It was a beautiful overcoat.”

The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature.

I tried to explain to her the significance of the great poet, but without much success,

Mark my words, when a society has to resort to the lavatory for its humour, the writing is on the wall.

Once I start a book I finish it. That was the way one was brought up.

Life is rather like a tin of sardines – we’re all of us looking for the key.

f they’d been working with Alec Guinness, for instance, they wouldn’t have known they were born if they’d not towed the line!

I’ve never seen the point of the sea, except where it meets the land. The shore has a point. The sea has none.

There’s very little in the substance of [THE LADY IN THE VAN] which is not fact though some adjustments have had to be made.

And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours

At eighty things do not occur; they recur.

If you think squash is a competitive activity, try flower arranging.

Books are not about passing time. They’re about other lives. Other worlds.

I write plays about things that I can’t resolve in my mind. I try to root things out.

But the headmaster happened to have been to Cambridge and decided to try and push some of us towards Oxford and Cambridge.

Having glimpsed a small part of life, men rise up and disappear as smoke, knowing only what each one has learned.

The minute that you’re not learning I believe you’re dead.

In the quest to be a man, you start to learn you need your family. If it wasn’t for them, I’d be way closer to insanity.

Winning is great, sure, but if you are really going to do something in life, the secret is learning how to lose.

As I learn more about myself, I think people learn more about me as well. It seems to correlate that way. I learn how to represent myself more as it goes on.

All wish to be learned, but no one is willing to pay the price.

It’s right to learn, even from the enemy.

If you’re looking for a quote that makes sense to you – you will not find it. You can learn every language and read every word you ever write, but you will not find what is in your heart.