One reads for pleasure…it is not a public duty.
ALAN BENNETTThat’s a bit like asking a man crawling across the Sahara whether he would prefer Perrier or Malvern water.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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A photograph on every mantlepiece. And all this mourning has veiled the truth. It’s not so much lest we forget, as lest we remember.
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I tried to explain to her the significance of the great poet, but without much success,
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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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It seems to me the mark of a civilized society that certain privileges should be taken for granted such as education, health care and the safety to walk the streets.
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Books are not about passing time. They’re about other lives. Other worlds.
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One of the hardest things for boys to learn is that a teacher is human.
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Cancer, like any other illness, is a bore.
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Why do we not care to acknowledge them? The cattle, the body count.
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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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My experience came before most of you were born.
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Cloisters, ancient libraries … I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.
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The nearest my parents came to alcohol was at Holy Communion and they utterly overestimated its effects.
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The longer I practise medicine, the more convinced I am there are only two types of cases: those that involve taking the trousers off and those that don’t.
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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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A bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes; a personality is stamped on a library just as a shoe is shaped by the foot.
ALAN BENNETT