Life is like a box of sardines and we are all looking for the key.
ALAN BENNETTAuthors, she soon decided, were probably best met within the pages of their novels, and were as much creatures of the reader’s imagination as the characters in their books.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up.
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That’s a bit like asking a man crawling across the Sahara whether he would prefer Perrier or Malvern water.
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A book is a device to ignite the imagination.
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Here I sit, alone at 60, Bald and fat and full of sin Cold the seat, and loud the cistern As I read the (Harpic) (Lysol) tin
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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.
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Put him in a nice detached villa and he’d never have written a word.
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Memories are not shackles, Franklin, they are garlands.
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…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.
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I don’t talk very well. With writing, you’ve time to get it right. Also I’ve found the more I talk the less I write, and if I didn’t write no one would want me to talk anyway.
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There is no such thing as a good script, onlya good film, and I’m conscious that my scripts often read better than they play.
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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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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!
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Our father the novelist; my husband the poet. He belongs to the ages – just don’t catch him at breakfast.
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Books did not care who was reading them or whether one read them or not. All readers were equal, herself included. Literature, she thought, is a commonwealth; letters a republic.
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My experience came before most of you were born.
ALAN BENNETT