Quote

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

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
Time
World
Passings
Worlds
Passing
Books
Lives
Book

More quotes by Alan Bennett

Image
It's the one species I wouldn't mind seeing vanish from the face of the earth. I wish they were like the White Rhinosix of them left in the Serengeti National Park, and all males.
Alan Bennett
Image
Standards are always out of date. That's what makes them standards.
Alan Bennett
Image
I lack what the English call character, by which they mean the power to refrain.
Alan Bennett
Image
Authors, she soon decided, were probably best met within the pages of their novels, and were as much creatures of the reader's imagination as the characters in their books. Nor did they seem to think one had done them a kindness by reading their writings. Rather they had done one the kindness by writing them.
Alan Bennett
Image
At eighty things do not occur they recur.
Alan Bennett
Image
To play Trivial Pursuit with a life like mine could be said to be a form of homeopathy.
Alan Bennett
Image
Those who have known the famous are publicly debriefed of their memories, knowing as their own dusk falls that they will only be remembered for remembering someone else.
Alan Bennett
Image
The days weren't long enough for the reading she wanted to do.
Alan Bennett
Image
...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.
Alan Bennett
Image
You don't put your life into your books, you find it there.
Alan Bennett
Image
Children always assume the sexual lives of their parents come to a grinding halt at their conception.
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
Life is rather like a tin of sardines - we're all of us looking for the key.
Alan Bennett
Image
My films are about embarrassment.
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
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
The nearest my parents came to alcohol was at Holy Communion and they utterly overestimated its effects. However bad the weather, Dad never drove to church because Mam thought the sacrament might make him incapable on the return journey.
Alan Bennett
Image
Above literature?' said the Queen. 'Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity.
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
Image
I can walk. It's just that I'm so rich I don't need to.
Alan Bennett