Cloisters, ancient libraries … I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.
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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Once I start a book I finish it. That was the way one was brought up.
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Memories are not shackles, Franklin, they are garlands.
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What I’m above all primarily concerned with is the substance of life, the pith of reality.
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My experience came before most of you were born.
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The majority of people perform well in a crisis and when the spotlight is on them; it’s on the Sunday afternoons of this life, when nobody is looking, that the spirit falters.
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I’m not “happy” but I’m not unhappy about it.
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You have the knowledge but that does not entitle you to be superior. Knowledge makes you the servant not the master.
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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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To begin with, it’s true, she read with trepidation and some unease.
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Had your forefathers, Wigglesworth, been as stupid as you are, the human race would never have succeeded in procreating itself.
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[B]riefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point.
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[talking about the Holocaust] ‘But to put something in context is a step towards saying it can be understood and that it can be explained.
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Artists, celebrated for their humanity, they turn out to be scarcely human at all.
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It’s subjunctive history. You know, the subjunctive? The mood used when something may or may not have happened. When it is imagined.
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I dont know whether you’ve ever looked into a miner’s eyes for any length of time, that is. Because it is the loveliest blue you’ve ever seen.
ALAN BENNETT