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There are more microbes per person than the entire population of the world. Imagine that. Per person. This means that if the time scale is diminished in proportion to that of space it would be quite possible for the whole story of Greece and Rome to be played out between farts.

Alan Bennett

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Alan Bennett
Age: 90
Born: 1934
Born: May 9
Actor
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Screenwriter
Stage Actor
Writer
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More quotes by Alan Bennett

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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.
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God doesn't do notes, either. Did Jesus Christ say, Can I be excused the Crucifixion? No!
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You always know when you're going to arrive. If you go by car, you don't. Apart from anything else, I prefer cycling. It puts you in a good mood, I find.
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Clichés can be quite fun. That's how they got to be clichés.
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I'm not happy but I'm not unhappy about it.
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Cloisters, ancient libraries ... I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.
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Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have.
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I think the writer's quite low down in the hierarchy really. But the fact that they took the piss out of Nicholas [Hynter] who, besides being the director, is also director of the National Theatre is, I'd have thought, slightly more risky.
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Life is like a box of sardines and we are all looking for the key.
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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.
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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.'
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One reads for pleasure...it is not a public duty.
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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.
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Polly: Education with socialists, it's like sex, all right as long as you don't have to pay for it.
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Memories are not shackles, Franklin, they are garlands.
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Life is generally something that happens elsewhere.
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We were put to Dickens as children but it never quite took. That unremitting humanity soon had me cheesed off.
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History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket.
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But then books, as I'm sure you know, seldom prompt a course of action. Books generally just confirm you in what you have, perhaps unwittingly, decided to do already. You go to a book to have your convictions corroborated. A book, as it were, closes the book.
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