Alan Bennett
51 quotes
Biography
Alan Bennett is an English playwright, author, actor and screenwriter. He has received numerous awards and honours including four BAFTA Awards, four Laurence Olivier Awards, and two Tony Awards.
"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."
"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."
"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."
"[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."
"...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."
"Geoff: We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn't obey the rules."
"Polly: Education with socialists, it's like sex, all right as long as you don't have to pay for it."
"Brian (asked how he feels about being a politician): Passes the time. Fills in that awkward gap between the cradle and the grave."
"George: That flaming dog has messed on our steps again. It's the one species I wouldn't mind seeing disappear from the face of the earth. I wish they were like the White Rhino—six of them left in the Serengeti National Park, and all males. Do you know what dogs are? They're those beer-sodden soccer fans piling out of coaches in a lay-by, yanking their cocks out without a blush and pissing up against the wall thirty-nine in a row. I can't stand it."
"Polly: Question is whether you hate the coach party because they're like the dogs or hate the dogs because they're like the coach party."
"George: I hate them all."
"Mrs Wicksteed: Of course, I've known for years our marriage has been a mockery. My body lying there night after night in the wasted moonlight. I know now how the Taj Mahal must feel."
"I lack what the English call character, by which they mean the power to refrain."
"That's a bit like asking a man crawling across the Sahara whether he would prefer Perrier or Malvern water."
""Then I want to end up 'Norwich. Well it's an epigrammatic way of saying 'Knickers off ready when I come home"."
"Counsel: [You are charged with] loitering to commit a felony. Now then Mr Golightly..."
"Golightly: Call me Fingers."
"Lady Dundown: How can the Zulu expect to be treated as civilized people if they declare war in the middle of the season!"
"Lady Dundown: I have never understood this liking for war. It panders to instincts already catered for within the scope of any respectable domestic establishment."
"Headmaster: Clad in the magnificent white silk robes of an Arab prince, with in his belt the short curved, gold sword of the Ashraf descendants of the Prophet, he hoped to pass unnoticed through London. Alas, he was mistaken. "Who am I?" he would cry despairingly. "You are Lawrence of Arabia" passers-by would stop him and say, "And I claim my five pounds.""
"Headmaster: Memories are not shackles, Franklin, they are garlands."
"Headmaster: They were all socialists. Why is it always the intelligent people who are socialists?"