Quote

Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have.

Alan Bennett

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Alan Bennett
Age: 90
Born: 1934
Born: May 9
Actor
Comedian
Diarist
Film Director
Playwright
Screenwriter
Stage Actor
Writer
Book
Assumed
Thinking
Definition
Classic
Definitions
Thinks
Read
Everyone
Often

More quotes by Alan Bennett

Image
At eighty things do not occur they recur.
Alan Bennett
Image
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
Image
I'm for the freedom of expression, given that it will be under strict control.
Alan Bennett
Image
At the drabber moments of my life (swilling some excrement from the steps, for instance, or rooting with a bent coat-hanger down a blocked sink) thoughts occur like 'I bet Tom Stoppard doesn't have to do this' or There is no doubt David Hare would have deputed this to an underling.'
Alan Bennett
Image
Mark my words, when a society has to resort to the lavatory for its humour, the writing is on the wall.
Alan Bennett
Image
Our father the novelist my husband the poet. He belongs to the ages - just don't catch him at breakfast. Artists, celebrated for their humanity, they turn out to be scarcely human at all.
Alan Bennett
Image
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
Image
Have you ever thought, headmaster, that your standards might perhaps be a little out of date? Of course they're out of date. Standards are always out of date. That is what makes them standards.
Alan Bennett
Image
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
Image
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
Image
We were put to Dickens as children but it never quite took. That unremitting humanity soon had me cheesed off.
Alan Bennett
Image
[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.
Alan Bennett
Image
I'm all in favour of free expression provided it's kept rigidly under control.
Alan Bennett
Image
The longer I practise medicine, the more convinced I am there are only two types of cases: those that involve taking the trousers off and those that don't.
Alan Bennett
Image
I turned down a knighthood. It would be like having to wear a suit every day of your life.
Alan Bennett
Image
Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting.
Alan Bennett
Image
Books are not about passing the time. They're about other lives. Other worlds.
Alan Bennett
Image
You don't put your life into your books, you find it there.
Alan Bennett
Image
I'm not good at precise, coherent argument. But plays are suited to incoherent argument, put into the mouths of fallible people.
Alan Bennett
Image
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