233 Quotes by Alan Bennett

It's not so much lest we forget, as lest we remember.

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)]

But ma’am must have been briefed, surely?’ ‘Of course,’ said the Queen, ‘but briefing 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.

Since Betty was on the pill or took precautions of her own which Graham did not choose to enquire into, the marital bed was untrammelled by tedious prophylaxis so that what Graham had been expecting to find an onerous and even distasteful duty unexpectedly partook of a freedom and absence of restraint that he found exhilerating.

Voiko olla suurempaa iloa kuin törmätä kirjailijaan, jonka teoksesta pitää, ja sitten huomata ettei hän ole kirjoittanut vain yhtä tai kahta kirjaa vaan yli kymmenen?

Watching people behave is nothing special; watching them trying to behave is always fascinating.

Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting.

My experience came before most of you were born. 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. But the headmaster happened to have been to Cambridge and decided to try and push some of us towards Oxford and Cambridge. So, half a dozen of us tried - not all of us in history - and we all eventually got in. So, to that extent, it [The History Boys] comes out of my own experience.

If you find yourself born in Barnsley and then set your sights on being Virginia Woolf it is not going to be roses all the way.