Anita Brookner Quotes
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A man can go from being a lover to being a stranger in three moves flat but a woman under the guise of friendship will engage in acts of duplicity which come to light very much later. There are different species of self-justification.
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In real life, it is the hare who wins. Every time. Look around you. And in any case it is my contention that Aesop was writing for the tortoise market. Hares have no time to read. They are too busy winning the game.
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I was brought up among the sort of self-important women who had a husband as one has an alibi.
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Great writers are the saints for the godless.
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Satire is dependent on strong beliefs, and on strong beliefs wounded.
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Existentialism is about being a saint without God; being your own hero, without all the sanction and support of religion or society.
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The lessons taught in great books are misleading. The commerce in life is rarely so simple and never so just.
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The evening passes somehow; I watch television with Nancy, or I write. It is difficult, not having a family, and it is difficult to explain. I always go to bed early. And I am always ready for Monday morning, that time that other people dread.
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I think you always feel braver in another language.
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The self-fulfilled woman is far from reality.
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You never know what you will learn till you start writing. Then you discover truths you never knew existed.
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It will be a pity if women in the more conventional mould are to be phased out, for there will never be anyone to go home to.
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Like many rich men, he thought in anecdotes; like many simple women, she thought in terms of biography.
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Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.
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Problems of human behavior still continue to baffle us, but at least in the Library we have them properly filed.
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I suppose what one wants really is ideal company and books are ideal company.
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You are wrong if you think you cannot live without love. I cannot live without it. I do not mean that I go into a decline, develop odd symptoms, became a caricature. I mean that I cannot live well without it. I cannot think or act or speak or write or even dream with any kind of energy in the absence of love. I feel excluded from the living world. I become cold, fish-like, immobile. I implode.
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For once a thing is known, it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten.
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A complete woman is probably not a very admirable creature. She is manipulative, uses other people to get her own way, and works within whatever system she is in.
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You have no idea how promising the world begins to look once you have decided to have it all for yourself. And how much healthier your decisions are once they become entirely selfish.
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To remain pure, a novel has to cast a moral puzzle. Anything else is mere negotiation.
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Fiction is the great repository of the moral sense. The wicked get punished.
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It is best to marry for purely selfish reasons.
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Good women always think it is their fault when someone else is being offensive. Bad women never take the blame for anything.
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Life is a pilgrimage and if you don't play by the rules you don't find the Road to Damascus, you find the Crown of Thorns.
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Real love is a pilgrimage. It happens when there is no strategy, but it is very rare because most people are strategists.
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Romanticism is not just a mode; it literally eats into every life. Women will never get rid of just waiting for the right man.
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Writing has freed me from the despair of living.
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When you make a break for freedom you don't necessarily find company on the way.
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Life... is not simply a series of exciting new ventures. The future is not always a whole new ball game. There tends to be unfinished business. One trails all sorts of things around with one, things that simply won't be got rid of.
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