One reads for pleasure…it is not a public duty.
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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Were we closer to the ground as children, or is the grass emptier now?
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You don’t put your life into your books, you find it there.
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Those who have known the famous are publicly debriefed of their memories.
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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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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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Children always assume the sexual lives of their parents come to a grinding halt at their conception.
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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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Standards are always out of date. That’s what makes them standards.
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Philip Larkin used to cheer himself up by looking in the mirror and saying the line from Rebecca, ‘I am Mrs de Winter now!
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My school was a state school in Leeds and the headmaster usually sent students to Leeds University but he didn’t normally send them to Oxford or Cambridge.
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Cloisters, ancient libraries … I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.
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Books are not about passing the time. They’re about other lives. Other worlds.
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You always know when you’re going to arrive. If you go by car, you don’t. Apart from anything else, I prefer cycling. It puts you in a good mood, I find.
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Why do we not care to acknowledge them? The cattle, the body count.
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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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