Standards are always out of date. That's what makes them standards.
Alan BennettRead
You don't put your life into your books, you find it there.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Books reflect and reveal truths about life rather than being mere vessels of personal experiences.
This quote suggests that literature serves as a mirror to our existence. Instead of just pouring our life experiences into our writing, we often discover and understand our own lives and the human experience through reading and engaging with literature. This encourages a deeper connection with the narrative structures that echo our realities and feelings.
Themes
BooksLiteratureLifeSelf-DiscoveryReading
In practice
Example use cases
During a book club discussion about the transformative power of literature.
More from Alan Bennett
All quotes βTo 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.
Alan BennettRead
A book is a device to ignite the imagination.
Alan BennettRead
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 BennettRead
To read is to withdraw.To make oneself unavailable. One would feel easier about it if the pursuit inself were less...selfish.
Alan BennettRead
The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - which you had thought special and particular to you. And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours
Alan BennettRead
Similar quotes
All literature, is, finally autobiographical.
Jorge Luis BorgesRead
The novel that an author writes is often not the novel that the reader reads, and most of the 'messages' in a novel are put there by the reader. There's nothing wrong with that, of course. That's how literature functions.
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Every great literature has always been allegorical - allegorical of some view of the whole universe. The 'Iliad' is only great because all life is a battle, the 'Odyssey' because all life is a journey, the Book of Job because all life is a riddle.
Gilbert K. ChestertonRead
I have good reason to be content, for thank God I can read and perhaps understand Shakespeare to his depths.
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It is clear that the books owned the shop rather than the other way about. Everywhere they had run wild and taken possession of their habitat, breeding and multiplying, and clearly lacking any strong hand to keep them down.
Agatha ChristieRead
You could compile the worst book in the world entirely out of selected passages from the best writers in the world.
Gilbert K. ChestertonRead