Quote

It [Cambridge] wasn't a holy grail in the sense that I'd never been to Cambridge. But then, when I did go, the contrast between Leeds, which was very black and sooty in those days, and Cambridge, which seemed like something out of a fairystory, in the grip of a hard frost, was just wonderful.

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
Contrast
Hard
Something
Seemed
Sooty
Never
Holy
Leeds
Like
Wasn
Grail
Days
Cambridge
Wonderful
Grip
Black
Frost
Sense

More quotes by Alan Bennett

Image
The thing I think about is that once you've done it, you then start to think about what you're going to do next. It's much easier to follow something that's not been as successful as this.
Alan Bennett
Image
It seems to me the mark of a civilized society that certain privileges should be taken for granted such as education, health care and the safety to walk the streets.
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Have you ever thought, headmaster, that your standards might perhaps be a little out of date? Of course they're out of date. Standards are always out of date.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 the time. They're about other lives. Other worlds.
Alan Bennett
Image
One reads for pleasure...it is not a public duty.
Alan Bennett
Image
My films are about embarrassment.
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
Why is it always the intelligent people who are socialists?
Alan Bennett
Image
Memories are not shackles, Franklin, they are garlands.
Alan Bennett
Image
It's subjunctive history. You know, the subjunctive? The mood used when something may or may not have happened. When it is imagined.
Alan Bennett
Image
A bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes a personality is stamped on a library just as a shoe is shaped by the foot.
Alan Bennett
Image
Life is generally something that happens elsewhere.
Alan Bennett
Image
Clichés can be quite fun. That's how they got to be clichés.
Alan Bennett
Image
Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting.
Alan Bennett
Image
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.
Alan Bennett
Image
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
Image
Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have.
Alan Bennett
Image
Cloisters, ancient libraries ... I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.
Alan Bennett
Image
Your whole life is on the other side of the glass. And there is nobody watching.
Alan Bennett
Image
A book is a device to ignite the imagination.
Alan Bennett