Alan Bennett Quotes

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.

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. 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.

A book is a device to ignite the imagination.

Books are not about passing time. They're about other lives. Other worlds. Far from wanting time to pass, one just wishes one had more of it. If one wanted to pass the time one could go to New Zealand.

You don't put your life into your books, you find it there.

We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn't obey the rules.

How do I define history? It's just one fucking thing after another

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." [Baffled at a Bookcase (London Review of Books, Vol. 33 No. 15, 28 July 2011)]

The days weren't long enough for the reading she wanted to do.

History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket.

Above literature?' said the Queen. 'Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity.

Sometimes there is no next time, no time-outs, no second chances. Sometimes it’s now or never.

The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature. Books did not care who was reading them or whether one read them or not. All readers were equal, herself included. Literature, she thought, is a commonwealth; letters a republic.

One of the hardest things for boys to learn is that a teacher is human. One of the hardest things for a teacher to learn is not to try and tell them.

[B]riefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point. Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up.

Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting.

I'm not "happy" but I'm not unhappy about it.

Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have.

One reads for pleasure...it is not a public duty.

... Once I start a book I finish it. That was the way one was brought up. Books, bread and butter, mashed potato - one finishes what's on one's plate. That's always been my philosophy.

History is just one fucking thing after another.

Clichés can be quite fun. That's how they got to be clichés.

To read is to withdraw.To make oneself unavailable. One would feel easier about it if the pursuit inself were less...selfish.

It's subjunctive history. You know, the subjunctive? The mood used when something may or may not have happened. When it is imagined.

...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.

It was the kind of library he had only read about in books.

Can there be any greater pleasure than to come across an author one enjoys and then to find they have written not just one book or two, but at least a dozen?

Cloisters, ancient libraries ... I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.

I think of literature,' she wrote, 'as a vast country to the far borders of which I am journeying but will never reach. And I have started to late. I will never catch up.

I don't always understand poetry!' 'You don't always understand it? Timms, I never understand it. But learn it now, know it now and you will understand it...whenever.

But then books, as I'm sure you know, seldom prompt a course of action. Books generally just confirm you in what you have, perhaps unwittingly, decided to do already. You go to a book to have your convictions corroborated. A book, as it were, closes the book.

Books are not about passing the time. They're about other lives. Other worlds.

To begin with, it's true, she read with trepidation and some unease. The sheer endlessness of books outfaced her and she had no idea how to go on; there was no system to her reading, with one book leading to another, and often she had two or three on the go at the same time.

All the effort went into getting there and then I had nothing left. I thought I'd got somewhere, then I found I had to go on.

Authors, 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. Nor did they seem to think one had done them a kindness by reading their writings. Rather they had done one the kindness by writing them.

Life is rather like a tin of sardines - we're all of us looking for the key.

One recipe for happiness is to have to sense of entitlement.' To this she added a star and noted at the bottom of the page: 'This is not a lesson I have ever been in a position to learn.

Why do we not care to acknowledge them? The cattle, the body count. We still don't like to admit the war was even partly our fault because so many of our people died. 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. Because you should realise the Cenotaph and the Last Post and all that stuff is concerned, there's no better way of forgetting something than by commemorating it.

The transmission of knowledge is in itself an erotic act.

I have to seem like a human being all the time, but I seldom have to be one. I have people to do that for me.

I would have thought," said the prime minister, "that Your Majesty was above literature." "Above literature?" said the Queen. "Who is above literature? You might as well say one is above humanity.

History nowadays is not a matter of conviction. It’s a performance. It’s entertainment. And if it isn’t, make it so.

God doesn't do notes, either. Did Jesus Christ say, "Can I be excused the Crucifixion?" No!

I saw someone peeing in Jermym Street the other day. I thought, is this the end of civilization as we know it? Or is it simply someone peeing in Jermyn Street?

Books did not care who was reading them or whether one read them or not. All readers were equal, herself included. Literature, she thought, is a commonwealth; letters a republic.

Dakin: The more you read, though, the more you'll see that literature is actually about losers. Scripps: No. Dakin: It's consolation. All literature is consolation.

And it occurred to her that reading was, among other things, a muscle and one that she had seemingly developed. She could read the novel with ease and great pleasure, laughing at remarks, they were hardly jokes, that she had not even noticed before.

Un libro è un ordigno per infiammare l'immaginazione.

Too late. It was all too late. But she went on, determined as ever and always trying to catch up.

I libri non sono un passatempo. Parlano di altre vite. Di altri mondi. Altro che far passare il tempo, Sir Kevin; non so cosa darei per averne di più.

...to her all books were the same and, as with her subjects, she felt a duty to approach them without prejudice...Lauren Bacall, Winifred Holtby, Sylvia Plath - who were they? Only be reading could she find out.

[...] But then books, as I'm sure you know, seldom prompt a course of actions. Books generally just confirm you in what you have, perhaps unwittingly, decided to do already. You go to a book to have your convictions corroborated. A book, as it were, closes the book.

[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. And if it can be explained that it can be explained away.' 'But this is History. Distance yourselves. Our perspective on the past alters. Looking back, immediately in front of us is dead ground. We don't see it, and because we don't see it this means that there is no period so remote as the recent past. And one of the historian's jobs is to anticipate what our perspective of that period will be... even on the Holocaust.

Still, though reading absorbed her, what the Queen had not expected was the degree to which it drained her of enthusiasm for anything else.

You don't put your life into books. You find it there.

Books are not about passing the time. They’re about other lives. Other worlds. Far from wanting time to pass, Sir Kevin, one just wishes one had more of it.

Never at my best when at my best behaviour.

One recipe for happiness is to have no sense of entitlement.

Pass the parcel. That's sometimes all you can do. Take it, feel it, and pass it on. Not for me, not for you, but for someone, somewhere, one day. Pass it on, boys. That's the game I want you to learn. Pass it on.

I know what’s required. It’s perfectly simple: Justice.

. . . there was little to choose between Jews and Catholics. The Jews had holidays that turned up out of the blue and the Catholics had children in much the same way.

At eighty things do not occur; they recur.

Good nature, or what is often considered as such, is the most selfish of all virtues: it is nine times out of ten mere indolence of disposition. William Hazlitt, ‘On the Knowledge of Character’ (1822)

HEADMASTER: I was a geographer. I went to Hull. IRWIN: Oh. Larkin. HEADMASTER: Everybody says that. 'Hull? Oh, Larkin.' I don't know about the poetry...as I say, I was a geographer...but as a librarian he was pitiless. The Himmler of the Accessions Desk. And now, we're told, women in droves. Art. They get away with murder.

Archbishop. Why do I never read the lesson?” “I beg your pardon, ma’am?” “In church. Everybody else gets to read and one never does. It’s not laid down, is it? It’s not off-limits?” “Not that I’m aware, ma’am.” “Good. Well in that case I’m going to start. Leviticus, here I come. Goodnight.” The archbishop shook his head and went back to Strictly Come Dancing.

I think of literature - she wrote - as a vast country to the far borders of which I am journeying but cannot possibly reach. And I have started too late. I will never catch up.

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.

She‘d never taken much interest in reading. She read, of course, as one did, but liking books was something she left to other people.

Ha megértjük a hálózattudomány ezen alaptételeit, az emberiség története mindjárt másként fest: nem "az egyik elbaszott dolog jön a másik után", ahogy Alan Bennett drámaíró kissé trágáran megfogalmazta, és nem is úgy jön az egyik a másik után, hogy aztán együtt basszák el, hanem milliónyi dolog függ össze milliárd szállal (és ezek közül csak egy a szexuális kapcsolat).

They fuck you up, your mum and dad', and if you're planning on writing that's probably a good thing. But if you are planning on writing and they haven't fucked you up, well, you've got nothing to go on, so then they've fucked you up good and proper.

When they arrived at the palace she had a word with Grant, the young footman in charge, who said it was security and that while ma'am had been in the Lords the sniffer dogs had been round and security had confiscated the book. He though it had probably been exploded. 'Exploded?' said the Queen. 'But it was Anita Brookner.

IRWIN: At the time of the Reformation there were fourteen foreskins of Christ preserved, but it was thought that the church of St John Lateran in Rome had the authentic prepuce. DAKIN: Don't think we're shocked by your mention of the word 'foreskin', sir. CROWTHER: No, sir. Some of us even have them. LOCKWOOD: Not Posner, though, sir. Posner's like, you know, Jewish. It's one of several things Posner doesn't have. (Posner mouths 'fuck off.')

One seldom was able to do her a good turn without some thoughts of strangulation.

The prime minister did not wholly believe in the past or in any lessons that might be drawn from it.

I am the King. I tell. I am not told. I am the verb, sir. I am not the object. (King George III)

Marriage is supposed to be a partnership. Good-looking people marry good-looking people and the others take what's left.

Still, to be urged to write and to be urged to publish are two different things and nobody so far was urging her to do the latter.

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.

She wasn't wholly infatuated, though she liked the way he looked; but, so too did he and that unfatuated her a bit.

A man has been arrested in Epsom for signalling to German planes with a lighted cigarette

Thus it was that the dawn of sensibility was mistaken for the onset of senility

...But what is it all about, what am I trying to do, is there a message? Nobody knows, and I certainly don't. If one could answer these questions in any other way than by writing what one has written, then there would be no point in writing at all.

To her, though, nothing could have been more serious, and 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.

Remember. You are a physician. You are not a policeman nor are you a minister of religion. You must take people as they come. Remember, too that though you will generally know more about the condition than the patient, it is the patient who has the condition and this if nothing else bestows on him or her a kind of wisdom. You have the knowledge but that does not entitle you to be superior. Knowledge makes you the servant not the master.

In fact she knew perfectly well (Norman again), but to her everybody's name was immaterial, as indeed was everything else, their clothes, their voice, their class. She was a genuine democrat, perhaps the only one in the country.

Stava scoprendo che un libro tira l'altro; ovunque si voltava si aprivano nuove porte e le giornate erano sempre troppo corte per leggere quanto avrebbe voluto.

Still as I've said all along, you can't polish a turd.

One recipe for happiness is to have no sense of entitlement

I note at the age of ten a fully developed ability not quite to enjoy myself, a capacity I have retained intact ever since.

Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio W. H. Auden, “Musée des Beaux Arts,” from Collected Poems Jane Austen Russell Banks, Continental Drift Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, translated by Alison Anderson Ishmael Beah, A Long Way Gone Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader The Holy Bible Elizabeth Bishop Roberto Bolaño, The Savage Detectives, translated by Natasha Wimmer

the more institutions and freedoms and benefits one can take for granted – of which in my view free state-supported galleries and museums come high on the list – the more civilised a society is.

Do you know,' she said one afternoon as they were reading in her study, 'do you know the area in which one would truly excel?' 'No, ma'am?' 'The pub quiz. One has been everywhere, seen everything, and though one might have difficulty with pop music and some sport, when it comes to the capital of Zimbabwe, say, or the principle exports of New South Wales, I have all that at my fingertips.

When dead she would exist only in the memories of people. She, who had never been subject to anyone would now be on the par with everybody else. Reading could not change that. Though writing might.

Today's ideology masquerades as pragmatism with that pragmatism reduced to the simplistic assumption that the basis of human nature is self-interest, a view which discount philanthropy, discredits altruism, with the only motive deserving of trust self-promotion and self-advancement. This so-called pragmatism is wicked and it is doubly so because it is held up as being both realistic and a virtue. Whereas it is shallow, shabby and all too often callous.

TIMMS: I don't see how we can understand it. Most of the stuff poetry's about hasn't happened to us yet. HECTOR: But it will, Timms. It will. And then you will have the antidote ready! Grief. Happiness. Even when you're dying. We're making your deathbeds here, boys. LOCKWOOD: Fucking Ada. HECTOR: Poetry is the trailer! Forthcoming attractions!

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. Illogically, I tend to assume that if you ( Philip Larkin) dream of caning schoolgirls bottoms, it disqualifies you from dismissing half the nation as work-shy.

Librarians who are arguing and lobbying for clever ebook lending solutions are completely missing the point. They are defending library as warehouse as opposed to fighting for the future, which is librarian as producer, concierge, connector, teacher and impresario.

One has met and indeed entertained many visiting heads of state, some of them unspeakable crooks and blackguards....One has given one's white-gloved hand to hands that were steeped in blood and conversed politely with men who have personally slaughtered children. One has waded through excrement and gore....Sometimes one has felt like a scented candle, sent in to perfume a regime, or aerate a policy, monarchy these days just a government-issue deoderant.

Books did not defer. All readers were equal, and this took her back to the beginning of her life. As a girl, one of her greatest thrills had been on VE night when she and her sister had slipped out of the gates and mingled unrecognised with the crowds. There was something of that, she felt, to reading. It was anonymous; it was shared; it was common. And she who had led a life apart now found that she craved it. Here in these pages and between these covers she could go unrecognised.

The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature. Books did not care who was reading them or whether one read them or not. All readers were equal, herself included. Literature, she thought, is a commonwealth; letters a republic. Actually she had heard this phrase, the republic of letters, used before, at graduation ceremonies, honorary degrees and the like, though without knowing quite what it meant. At that time talk of a republic of any sort she had thought mildly insulting and in her actual presence tactless to say the least. It was only now she understood what it meant. Books did not defer. All readers were equal and this took her back to the beginning of her life. As a girl, one of her greatest thrills had been on VE night when she and her sister had slipped out of the gates and mingled unrecognised with the crowds. There was something of that, she felt, to reading. It was anonymous; it was shared; it was common. And she who had led a life apart now found that she craved it. Here in these pages and between these covers she could go unrecognised.