Alan Bennett

“She‘d never taken much interest in reading. She read, of course, as one did, but liking books was something she left to other people.”

“Clichés can be quite fun. That's how they got to be clichés.”

“Proust's is a long book, though, water- skiing permitting, you could get through it in the summer recess”

“When they arrived at the palace she had a word with Grant, the young footman in charge, who said it was security and that while ma'am had been in the Lords the sniffer dogs had been round and security had confiscated the book. He though it had probably been exploded.'Exploded?' said the Queen. 'But it was Anita Brookner.”

“One reads for pleasure...it is not a public duty.”

“It's subjunctive history. You know, the subjunctive? The mood used when something may or may not have happened. When it is imagined.”

“Silläkin riskillä että kuulostan paistilta", kuningatar sanoi, "kirjat tekevät ihmisestä kypsemmän.”

“Aamulla kuningattarella oli vähän nuhaa, ja koska sovittuja tapaamisia ei ollut, hän sanoi olevansa ehkä vilustunut ja jäi vuoteeseen. Se ei ollut hänelle tyypillistä eikä myöskään totta, hän sanoi sen oikeastaan vains siksi että saisi jatkaa lukemista.”

“Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting.”

“At eighty things do not occur; they recur.”

“ . . . there was little to choose between Jews and Catholics. The Jews had holidays that turned up out of the blue and the Catholics had children in much the same way.”

“Marriage is supposed to be a partnership. Good-looking people marry good-looking people and the others take what's left.”

“[talking about the Holocaust]'But to put something in context is a step towards saying it can be understood and that it can be explained. And if it can be explained that it can be explained away.''But this is History. Distance yourselves. Our perspective on the past alters. Looking back, immediately in front of us is dead ground. We don't see it, and because we don't see it this means that there is no period so remote as the recent past. And one of the historian's jobs is to anticipate what our perspective of that period will be... even on the Holocaust.”

“I don't always understand poetry!''You don't always understand it? Timms, I never understand it. But learn it now, know it now and you will understand it...whenever.”

“She wasn't wholly infatuated, though she liked the way he looked; but, so too did he and that unfatuated her a bit.”

“How old does one have to be still to say tits?”

“The Jews had holidays that turned up out of the blue and the Catholics had children in much the same way.”

“...to her all books were the same and, as with her subjects, she felt a duty to approach them without prejudice...Lauren Bacall, Winifred Holtby, Sylvia Plath - who were they? Only be reading could she find out.”

“[...] But then books, as I'm sure you know, seldom prompt a course of actions. 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.”

“History is just one fucking thing after another.”

“Archbishop. Why do I never read the lesson?” “I beg your pardon, ma’am?” “In church. Everybody else gets to read and one never does. It’s not laid down, is it? It’s not off-limits?” “Not that I’m aware, ma’am.”“Good. Well in that case I’m going to start. Leviticus, here I come. Goodnight.” The archbishop shook his head and went back to Strictly Come Dancing.”

“History nowadays is not a matter of conviction.It’s a performance. It’s entertainment. And if it isn’t, make it so.”

“Still, for all that everybody, while not happy, is not unhappy about it. And so they go on.”

“All the effort went into getting there and then I had nothing left. I thought I'd got somewhere, then I found I had to go on.”

“History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket.”

“The days weren't long enough for the reading she wanted to do.”

“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.”

“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.”

“... Once I start a book I finish it. That was the way one was brought up. Books, bread and butter, mashed potato - one finishes what's on one's plate. That's always been my philosophy.”

“Remember. You are a physician. You are not a policeman nor are you a minister of religion. You must take people as they come. Remember, too that though you will generally know more about the condition than the patient, it is the patient who has the condition and this if nothing else bestows on him or her a kind of wisdom. You have the knowledge but that does not entitle you to be superior. Knowledge makes you the servant not the master.”

“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."[Baffled at a Bookcase (London Review of Books, Vol. 33 No. 15, 28 July 2011)]”

“IRWIN: At the time of the Reformation there were fourteen foreskins of Christ preserved, but it was thought that the church of St John Lateran in Rome had the authentic prepuce.DAKIN: Don't think we're shocked by your mention of the word 'foreskin', sir.CROWTHER: No, sir. Some of us even have them.LOCKWOOD: Not Posner, though, sir. Posner's like, you know, Jewish.It's one of several things Posner doesn't have. (Posner mouths 'fuck off.')”

“HEADMASTER: I was a geographer. I went to Hull.IRWIN: Oh. Larkin.HEADMASTER: Everybody says that. 'Hull? Oh, Larkin.' I don't know about the poetry...as I say, I was a geographer...but as a librarian he was pitiless. The Himmler of the Accessions Desk. And now, we're told, women in droves. Art. They get away with murder.”

“God doesn't do notes, either. Did Jesus Christ say, "Can I be excused the Crucifixion?" No!”

“Why do we not care to acknowledge them? The cattle, the body count. We still don't like to admit the war was even partly our fault because so many of our people died. A photograph on every mantlepiece. And all this mourning has veiled the truth. It's not so much lest we forget, as lest we remember. Because you should realise the Cenotaph and the Last Post and all that stuff is concerned, there's no better way of forgetting something than by commemorating it.”

“To read is to withdraw.To make oneself unavailable. One would feel easier about it if the pursuit inself were less...selfish.”

“I'm not "happy" but I'm not unhappy about it.”

“I would have thought," said the prime minister, "that Your Majesty was above literature." "Above literature?" said the Queen. "Who is above literature? You might as well say one is above humanity.”

“It was the kind of libraryhe had only read about in books.”

“The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature. Books did not care who was reading them or whether one read them or not. All readers were equal, herself included. Literature, she thought, is a commonwealth; letters a republic.”

“One recipe for happiness is to have to sense of entitlement.' To this she added a star and noted at the bottom of the page: 'This is not a lesson I have ever been in a position to learn.”

“Sometimes there is no next time, no time-outs, no second chances. Sometimes it’s now or never.”

“One of the hardest things for boys to learn is that a teacher is human. One of the hardest things for a teacher to learn is not to try and tell them.”

“I have to seem like a human being all the time, but I seldom have to be one. I have people to do that for me.”

“I am the King. I tell. I am not told. I am the verb, sir. I am not the object. (King George III)”

“[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.”

“Above literature?' said the Queen. 'Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity.”

“...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.”

“Cloisters, ancient libraries ... I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.”

“You don't put your life into your books, you find it there.”