{"author":"Alan Bennett","author_id":"Alan+Bennett","total_quotes":32,"quotes":[{"text":"Books and bookcases cropping up in stuff that I've written means that they have to be reproduced on stage or on film. This isn't as straightforward as it might seem. A designer will either present you with shelves lined with gilt-tooled library sets, the sort of clubland books one can rent by the yard as decor, or he or she will send out for some junk books from the nearest second-hand bookshop and think that those will do. Another short cut is to order in a cargo of remaindered books so that you end up with a shelf so garish and lacking of character it bears about as much of a relationship to literature as a caravan site does to architecture. 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 to the foot.","author":"Alan Bennett","tags":["books","bookshelf","bookshop","literature"],"id":11662,"author_id":"Alan+Bennett"},{"text":"[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.","author":"Alan Bennett","tags":["books","briefing","entertainment","expansion","information","inspiration","learning","reading"],"id":34216,"author_id":"Alan+Bennett"},{"text":"You don't put your life into your books, you find it there.","author":"Alan Bennett","tags":["books","life"],"id":44325,"author_id":"Alan+Bennett"},{"text":"Pass the parcel. That's sometimes all you can do. Take it, feel it, and pass it on. Not for me, not for you, but for someone, somewhere, one day. Pass it on, boys. That's the game I want you to learn. Pass it on.","author":"Alan Bennett","tags":["inspirational","leadership","teaching"],"id":45674,"author_id":"Alan+Bennett"},{"text":"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.","author":"Alan Bennett","tags":["books"],"id":57689,"author_id":"Alan+Bennett"},{"text":"All knowledge is precious whether or not it serves the slightest human use.","author":"Alan Bennett","tags":["human","precious","whether "],"id":73018,"author_id":"Alan+Bennett"},{"text":"...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.","author":"Alan Bennett","tags":["biographies","books","celebrities","equality","information","knowledge","learning","prejudice","reading"],"id":89755,"author_id":"Alan+Bennett"},{"text":"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.","author":"Alan Bennett","tags":["humanity","teaching"],"id":98015,"author_id":"Alan+Bennett"},{"text":"They fuck you up, your mum and dad', and if you're planning on writing that's probably a good thing. But if you are planning on writing and they haven't fucked you up, well, you've got nothing to go on, so then they've fucked you up good and proper.","author":"Alan Bennett","tags":["family","humour","parents","writing"],"id":107145,"author_id":"Alan+Bennett"},{"text":"Too late. It was all too late. But she went on, determined as ever and always trying to catch up.","author":"Alan Bennett","tags":["alive","determination","happiness","moving-forward","never-give-up","philosophy-of-life","positive-thinking"],"id":109342,"author_id":"Alan+Bennett"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":32,"pages":4,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}