Alan Bennett: Quotes about reading

Alan Bennett is English actor, author. Explore interesting quotes on reading.
Alan Bennett: 112 quotes2 likes

“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 book The Uncommon Reader

Source: The Uncommon Reader

“[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.”

Alan Bennett book The Uncommon Reader

Source: The Uncommon Reader

“Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting.”

Alan Bennett book The Uncommon Reader

Source: The Uncommon Reader

“… 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 book The Uncommon Reader

Source: The Uncommon Reader

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

Alan Bennett book The Uncommon Reader

Source: The Uncommon Reader

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

Alan Bennett book The Uncommon Reader

Source: The Uncommon Reader

“One of the good things about Larkin is that he still has you firmly by the hand as you cross the finishing-line, whereas reading Auden is like doing a parachute-drop: for a while the view is wonderful, but then you end up on your back in the middle of a ploughed field and in the wrong county.”

Alan Bennett

"Instead of a Present", p. 323 (1982).
Writing Home (1994)

“He had never read Proust, but he had somehow taken a short cut across the allotments and arrived at the same conclusions.”

Alan Bennett

"Russell Harty, 1934 – 1988", p. 52 (1988).
Writing Home (1994)