We still don’t like to admit the war was even partly our fault because so many of our people died.
ALAN BENNETT…she felt about reading what some writers felt about writing: that it was impossible not to do it and that at this late stage of her life she had been chosen to read as others were chosen to write.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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If I had to sum up my work, I suppose that’s it really: I’m taking the pith out of reality.
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It was the kind of library he had only read about in books.
ALAN BENNETT -
Deluded liberal that I am, I persist in thinking that those with a streak of sexual unorthodoxy ought to be more tolerant of their fellows than those who lead an entirely godly, righteous and sober life.
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I’ve never seen the point of the sea, except where it meets the land. The shore has a point. The sea has none.
ALAN BENNETT -
We have fish and chips, which W. and I fetch from the shop in Settle market-place.
ALAN BENNETT -
Once I start a book I finish it. That was the way one was brought up.
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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
ALAN BENNETT -
[B]riefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point.
ALAN BENNETT -
Of course my standards are out of date! That’s why they’re called standards.
ALAN BENNETT -
It [Cambridge] wasn’t a holy grail in the sense that I’d never been to Cambridge.
ALAN BENNETT -
One recipe for happiness is to have to sense of entitlement.’ To this she added a star and noted at the bottom of the page: ‘This is not a lesson I have ever been in a position to learn.
ALAN BENNETT -
The sheer endlessness of books outfaced her and she had no idea how to go on; there was no system to her reading, with one book leading to another, and often she had two or three on the go at the same time.
ALAN BENNETT -
Books, bread and butter, mashed potato – one finishes what’s on one’s plate. That’s always been my philosophy.
ALAN BENNETT -
I’m not “happy” but I’m not unhappy about it.
ALAN BENNETT -
The trouble is, as soon as you’ve chosen somebody it obscures anybody else you might have thought of.
ALAN BENNETT