Put him in a nice detached villa and he’d never have written a word.
ALAN BENNETTThe trouble is, as soon as you’ve chosen somebody it obscures anybody else you might have thought of.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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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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One of the hardest things for a teacher to learn is not to try and tell them.
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However bad the weather, Dad never drove to church because Mam thought the sacrament might make him incapable on the return journey.
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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.
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One reads for pleasure…it is not a public duty.
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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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Were we closer to the ground as children, or is the grass emptier now?
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One of the hardest things for boys to learn is that a teacher is human.
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Artists, celebrated for their humanity, they turn out to be scarcely human at all.
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Art comes out of art; it begins with imitation, often in the form of parody, and it’s in the process of imitating the voice of others that one comes to learn the sound of one’s own.
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What she was finding also was how one book led to another, doors kept opening wherever she turned and the days weren’t long enough for the reading she wanted to do.
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At eighty things do not occur; they recur.
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Soft Left, Hard Right, Soft Right and Centre. I am not listed. I should probably come under Soft Centre.
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To read is to withdraw.To make oneself unavailable. One would feel easier about it if the pursuit inself were less…selfish.
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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
ALAN BENNETT