Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up.
ALAN BENNETTBut then books, as I’m sure you know, seldom prompt a course of action.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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I tried to explain to her the significance of the great poet, but without much success,
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We still don’t like to admit the war was even partly our fault because so many of our people died.
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Nor did they seem to think one had done them a kindness by reading their writings. Rather they had done one the kindness by writing them.
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His writing is that of someone whose whole life was spent in apartments, with lifts, stairwells, muffled voices behind closed doors, and sounds through walls.
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We were put to Dickens as children but it never quite took. That unremitting humanity soon had me cheesed off.
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If you find yourself born in Barnsley and then set your sights on being Virginia Woolf it is not going to be roses all the way.
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The days weren’t long enough for the reading she wanted to do.
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Culminating with a man in a white coat saying to one kindly, “And now can you tell me the name of the Prime Minister?”
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Only when I mention it to W. does he explain Kestrel is now a lager. I imagine the future is going to contain an increasing number of incidents like this.
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Books are not about passing time. They’re about other lives. Other worlds.
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You always know when you’re going to arrive. If you go by car, you don’t. Apart from anything else, I prefer cycling. It puts you in a good mood, I find.
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I think the writer’s quite low down in the hierarchy really. But the fact that they took the piss out of Nicholas [Hynter] who, besides being the director, is also director of the National Theatre is, I’d have thought, slightly more risky.
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Books, bread and butter, mashed potato – one finishes what’s on one’s plate. That’s always been my philosophy.
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I had no idea of who could play it, no notion really. Then Richard came to see us but I don’t think it was decided at that meeting.
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Life is rather like a tin of sardines – we’re all of us looking for the key.
ALAN BENNETT