The next library is a place, still. A place where people come together to do co-working and coordinate and invent projects worth working on together. Aided by a librarian who can bring domain knowledge and people knowledge and access to information to bear.

— Alan Bennett

Alan Bennett Quotes

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.

— Alan Bennett

I saw someone peeing in Jermym Street the other day. I thought, is this the end of civilization as we know it? Or is it simply someone peeing in Jermyn Street?

— Alan Bennett

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

— Alan Bennett

It was the kind of library he had only read about in books.

— Alan Bennett

If I am doing nothing, I like to be doing nothing to some purpose. That is what leisure means.

— Alan Bennett

Nature played a cruel trick on her by giving her a waxed mustache.

— Alan Bennett

Life is generally something that happens elsewhere.

— Alan Bennett

Had your forefathers, Wigglesworth, been as stupid as you are, the human race would never have succeeded in procreating itself.

— Alan Bennett

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

I’m not “happy” but I’m not unhappy about it.

— Alan Bennett

Your whole life is on the other side of the glass. And there is nobody watching.

— Alan Bennett

We were put to Dickens as children but it never quite took. That unremitting humanity soon had me cheesed off.

— Alan Bennett

No mention of God. They keep Him up their sleeves for as long as they can, vicars do. They know it puts people off.

— Alan Bennett

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

Art comes out of art; it begins with imitation, often in the form of parody, and it’s in the process of imitating the voice of others that one comes to learn the sound of one’s own.

— Alan Bennett

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

Our father the novelist; my husband the poet. He belongs to the ages – just don’t catch him at breakfast. Artists, celebrated for their humanity, they turn out to be scarcely human at all.

— Alan Bennett

Schweitzer in the Congo did not derive more moral credit than Larkin did for living in Hull.

— Alan Bennett

I’ve never forgotten that experience. But I had nobody at school that was either like Hector or Irwin. The masters had no idea what was expected of you in the scholarship exam, so you just had to busk it really.

— Alan Bennett

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
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