Quote

A book is a device to ignite the imagination.

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
Reading
Book
Ignite
Device
Devices
Imagination

More quotes by Alan Bennett

Image
It was the kind of library he had only read about in books.
Alan Bennett
Image
Children always assume the sexual lives of their parents come to a grinding halt at their conception.
Alan Bennett
Image
If, for instance, we'd made the film after the show had been to Broadway, it would have been exactly the same film but we would have been assured that they would have understood it. We didn't have to do any alterations for Broadway. I was supposed to go a fortnight before it opened to alter anything that was necessary and there was nothing really.
Alan Bennett
Image
To play Trivial Pursuit with a life like mine could be said to be a form of homeopathy.
Alan Bennett
Image
I've never seen the point of the sea, except where it meets the land. The shore has a point. The sea has none.
Alan Bennett
Image
Cloisters, ancient libraries ... I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.
Alan Bennett
Image
At eighty things do not occur they recur.
Alan Bennett
Image
My films are about embarrassment.
Alan Bennett
Image
Life is generally something that happens elsewhere.
Alan Bennett
Image
Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have.
Alan Bennett
Image
An article on playwrights in the Daily Mail , listed according to Hard Left, Soft Left, Hard Right, Soft Right and Centre. I am not listed. I should probably come under Soft Centre.
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've never seen the point of the sea, except where it meets the land. The shore has a point. The sea has none.
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
Were we closer to the ground as children, or is the grass emptier now?
Alan Bennett
Image
Never read the Bible as if it means something. Or at any rate don't try and mean it. Nor prayers. The liturgy is best treated and read as if it's someone announcing the departure of trains.
Alan Bennett
Image
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.
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
Art comes out of art it begins with imitation, often in the form of parody, and it's in the process of imitating the voice of others that one comes to learn the sound of one's own.
Alan Bennett
Image
What I'm above all primarily concerned with is the substance of life, the pith of reality. If I had to sum up my work, I suppose that's it really: I'm taking the pith out of reality.
Alan Bennett