Quotes from 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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 to tell them.

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

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

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.

One recipe for happiness is to have no sense of entitlement

Never be prime minister at the start of a war, Nessie [..] The man that lead you into it isn't the one to lead you out of it.