Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader Quotes

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.

A book is a device to ignite the imagination.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Too late. It was all too late. But she went on, determined as ever and always trying to catch up.

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 think of literature - she wrote - as a vast country to the far borders of which I am journeying but cannot possibly reach. And I have started too late. I will never catch up.