Quotes from Alan Bennett

A library in the middle of a community is a cross between an emergency exit, a life raft and a festival. They are cathedrals of the mind; hospitals of the soul; theme parks of the imagination.

Libraries have to be local, they have to be handy. They shouldn't need an expedition. But that early period in a child's reading life is vital. Interfere with that, hinder a child's access to books in whatever form and you damage that child probably for life. I have said it many times already but it's worth saying again: closing libraries is child abuse. Enough ranting.

Libraries are very special spaces, spaces where people come together in separate but joint pursuits of knowledge, of learning. Libraries are the heartbeats of communities.

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

For Graham's mother 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.

Books are not about passing the time. They're about other lives. Other worlds.

and when Mrs Thatcher came to the college for a scientific symposium Tyson was deputed to take her round the Common Room. This is hung with portraits and photographs of dead fellows, including one of the economist G. D. H. Cole. Tyson planned to take Mrs Thatcher up to it saying, 'And this, Prime Minister, is a former fellow, G. D. H. Dole.' Whereupon, with luck, Mrs Thatcher would have had to say, 'Cole not Dole.' In the event he did take her round but lost his nerve.

To reduce a library to simple architecture, bricks and mortar is a mistake. Similarly, to suggest a library is defined by the books on the shelf is erroneous.

Del resto i libri, come certo saprà, è raro che inducano ad agire. In genere confermano solo quello che, magari inconsapevolmente, si è già deciso di fare. Si ricorre ad un libro per avere conferma delle proprie convinzioni. In altri termini per chiudere un capitolo.

The king is up. You attend on the king, not on the clock. When the king is awake, you are awake.

I am married,' she shouted, 'to the cupboard under the sink.' A remark made more mysterious to Mrs Barnes by the sound of a passing ice-cream van playing the opening bars of the 'Blue Danube'.

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?

I'm even a fool at the flower arrangement. I ought to have a Ph.D. in the subject the number of classes I've been to but still my efforts show as much evidence of art as walking sticks in an umbrella stand.

We met it with love,' he cries, as if love were some all-purpose antibiotic, which to Geoffrey it probably is.

Books are not about passing the time.They're about other lives.

Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity.

Books and stories are lifelines, and libraries house those lifelines, making them available to all. They are important not just for the books, but for the space and freedom they provide, as well as the navigation and advice provided by librarians.

3 June. The air is full of birdsong now in June as it never is in July or August perhaps because it's too hot or because the birds have built their nests, raised their young and gone. Now there is trilling, chinking and chirruping, a dialogue of persistence and variety that goes on far into the night.

It could be a Michael Powell film or a page from the diaries of Denton Welch...the field would make a good Brideshead-like beginning for a film: as it is now and as it was then...'There is nothing I would want to alter or improve. Unattended to, disregarded (though it's grade 1 listed) it is just as the past should be.

He asked whether I had any trouble with my stomach. I hadn't, but the question was alarming...more widespread than I'd imagined...What in fact the doctor was asking was whether I had a delicate stomach.

Books did not defer. All readers were equal and this took her back to the beginning of her life. As a girl, one of her greatest thrills had been on VE night when she and her sister had slipped out of the gates and mingled unrecognised with the crowds. There was something of that, she felt, to reading. It was anonymous; it was shared; it was common. And she who had led a life apart now found that she craved it. Here in these pages and between these covers she could go unrecognised.

The equanimity with regard to my handwriting vanishes when I look at the corrections I make to a script...here my handwriting is big, childish, clumsy with no evidence of character and purpose... mine reverts to the all-over-the-place stuff I used to write while I was in the army and before I got to University... why I've no idea. But it is so.

La sua fede era autentica, ma così duttile e venata d'ironia che Dio era esposto alle sue critiche quanto l'arcivescovo di Canterbury (che in privato lui chiamava Patatone).

Geoffrey's bad enough but I'm glad I wasn't married to Jesus.