QUOTES by Alan Bennett
Find most favourite and famour Authors from A.A Milne to Zoe Kravitz.
The king is up. You attend on the king, not on the clock. When the king is awake, you are awake.
Quote by -Alan Bennett
The prime minister did not wholly believe in the past or in any lessons that might be drawn from it.
Quote by -Alan Bennett
Proust's is a long book, though, water- skiing permitting, you could get through it in the summer recess
Quote by -Alan Bennett
Books are wonderful, aren't they?' she said to the vice-chancellor who concurred. 'At the risk of sounding like a piece of steak,' she said, 'they tenderise one.
Quote by -Alan Bennett
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.
Quote by -Alan Bennett
Still, for all that everybody, while not happy, is not unhappy about it. And so they go on.
Quote by -Alan Bennett
The Jews had holidays that turned up out of the blue and the Catholics had children in much the same way.
Quote by -Alan Bennett
She wasn't wholly infatuated, though she liked the way he looked; but, so too did he and that unfatuated her a bit.
Quote by -Alan Bennett
I note at the age of ten a fully developed ability not quite to enjoy myself, a capacity I have retained intact ever since.
Quote by -Alan Bennett
It is seldom at the frontier that discoveries are made but more often in the dustbin.
Quote by -Alan Bennett
Still, though reading absorbed her, what the Queen had not expected was the degree to which it drained her of enthusiasm for anything else.
Quote by -Alan Bennett
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.
Quote by -Alan Bennett
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.
Quote by -Alan Bennett
One seldom was able to do her a good turn without some thoughts of strangulation.
Quote by -Alan Bennett
I am the King. I tell. I am not told. I am the verb, sir. I am not the object. (King George III)
Quote by -Alan Bennett
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.
Quote by -Alan Bennett
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.
Quote by -Alan Bennett
Marriage is supposed to be a partnership. Good-looking people marry good-looking people and the others take what's left.
Quote by -Alan Bennett
Books are not about passing the time. They're about other lives. Other worlds.
Quote by -Alan Bennett
. . . 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.
Quote by -Alan Bennett
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.
Quote by -Alan Bennett
History nowadays is not a matter of conviction. It’s a performance. It’s entertainment. And if it isn’t, make it so.
Quote by -Alan Bennett
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?
Quote by -Alan Bennett
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?
Quote by -Alan Bennett
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.
Quote by -Alan Bennett
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.
Quote by -Alan Bennett
God doesn't do notes, either. Did Jesus Christ say, "Can I be excused the Crucifixion?" No!
Quote by -Alan Bennett
Life is rather like a tin of sardines - we're all of us looking for the key.
Quote by -Alan Bennett
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.
Quote by -Alan Bennett
To read is to withdraw.To make oneself unavailable. One would feel easier about it if the pursuit inself were less...selfish.
Quote by -Alan Bennett
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.
Quote by -Alan Bennett
... 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.
Quote by -Alan Bennett
It's subjunctive history. You know, the subjunctive? The mood used when something may or may not have happened. When it is imagined.
Quote by -Alan Bennett
Cloisters, ancient libraries ... I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.
Quote by -Alan Bennett
...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.
Quote by -Alan Bennett