Cloisters, ancient libraries … I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.
ALAN BENNETTAnd 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
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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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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Never read the Bible as if it means something. Or at any rate don’t try and mean it. Nor prayers.
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I write plays about things that I can’t resolve in my mind. I try to root things out.
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The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you.
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We have fish and chips, which W. and I fetch from the shop in Settle market-place.
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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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Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up.
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Why do we not care to acknowledge them? The cattle, the body count.
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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.
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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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Schweitzer in the Congo did not derive more moral credit than Larkin did for living in Hull.
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Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting.
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Of course my standards are out of date! That’s why they’re called standards.
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I suppose I’m the only person who remembers one of the most exciting of his ballets-it’s the fruit of an unlikely collaboration between Nijinsky on the one hand and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on the other.
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I can walk. It’s just that I’m so rich I don’t need to.
ALAN BENNETT