Alan Bennett > Quotes

“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. And 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”
― Alan Bennett, The History Boys: The Film

“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. ”
― Alan Bennett

“A book is a device to ignite the imagination.”
― Alan Bennett

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

“You don't put your life into your books, you find it there.”
― Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader

“How do I define history? It's just one fucking thing after another"
- Rudge”
― Alan Bennett, The History Boys

“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. ”
― Alan Bennett

“Above literature?' said the Queen. 'Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity.”
― Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader

“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.”
― Alan Bennett

“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. ”
― Alan Bennett

“Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have. ”
― Alan Bennett

“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 unique 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.”
― Alan Bennett

“Life is rather like a tin of sardines - we're all of us looking for the key.”
― Alan Bennett

“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.”
― Alan Bennett, The History Boys

“Briefing is terse, factual and to the point. Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up.”
― Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader

“Don’t let’s ask for the moon. We have the stars. ”
― Alan Bennett, The History Boys

“...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.”
― Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader

“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?”
― Alan Bennett

“Sometimes there is no next time, no time-outs, no second chances. Sometimes it’s now or never.”
― Alan Bennett

“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.”
― Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader

“British playwright Alan Bennett once said, "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.”
― Alan Bennett

“...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.”
― Alan Bennett, Writing Home

“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.”
― Alan Bennett, The History Boys

“Cloisters, ancient libraries ... I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.”
― Alan Bennett, The History Boys

“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!”
― Alan Bennett

“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.”
― Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader

“God doesn't do notes, either. Did Jesus Christ say, "Can I be excused the Crucifixion?" No!”
― Alan Bennett, The History Boys

“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.”
― Alan Bennett, The History Boys

“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.')”
― Alan Bennett, The History Boys

“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.”
― Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader

“It was the kind of library
he had only read about in books.”
― Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader

“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.”
― Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader

“Miss S. bevorzugte das pathetische Wort ‚land’ gegenüber dem üblichen ‚country’. ‚This land …’ In diesem Sinne gebraucht, ist es zwar nicht direkt die Sprache des Wahnsinns, aber doch der Besessenheit. Zeugen Jehovas sprechen ständig von ‚this land’, ebenso die National Front. Land ist gleich country plus Vorsehung – ein Land im Angesicht Gottes. Auch Mrs. Thatcher sagt ‚this land’.”
― Alan Bennett, Die Lady Im Lieferwagen

“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.' (written by Queen of England)”
― Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader

“... 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.”
― Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader

“The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something lofty 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.”
― Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader

“I am the King. I tell. I am not told. I am the verb, sir. I am not the object. (King George III)”
― Alan Bennett, The Madness of George III

“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.”
― Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader

“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.”
― Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader