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Anita Brookner Quotes
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Writing novels preserves you in a state of innocence — a lot passes you by — simply because your attention is otherwise diverted.
Anita Brookner
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The essence of romantic love is that wonderful beginning, after which sadness and impossibility may become the rule.
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Time misspent in youth is sometimes all the freedom one ever has.
Anita Brookner
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The lessons taught in great books are misleading. The commerce in life is rarely so simple and never so just.
Anita Brookner
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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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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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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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In the street the rain was little more than a fine mist which softened the outlines of the houses and even lent a touch of poetry to a neighbourhood unlikely to evoke tender emotions. He raised his eyes to a roofline bristling with television aerials, lowered them again to windows still blank before the evening lights were lit.
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All good fortune is a gift of the gods, and... you don't win the favors of the ancient gods by being good, but by being bold.
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They were privileged children…they would always expect to be greeted with smiles.
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And without understanding, could each properly love the other?
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Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.
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Literature for me was a magnificent destiny for which I was not yet fully prepared.
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What is interesting about self-analysis is that it leads nowhere. It is an art form in itself.
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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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In real life, of course, 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 have reached the age when a woman begins to perceive that she is growing into the person she least plans to resemble: her mother.
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That sun, that light had faded, and she had faded with them. Now she was as grey as the season itself.
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I am not a romantic. I am a domestic animal. I do not sigh and yearn for extravagant displays of passion, for the grand affair, the world well lost for love. I know all that, and know that it leaves you lonely. No, what I crave is the simplicity of routine. An evening walk, arm in arm, in fine weather. A game of cards. Time for idle talk. Preparing a meal together.
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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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Satire is dependent on strong beliefs, and on strong beliefs wounded.
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Women have come a long way, of course: we can all be left alone at night now. But sometimes it seems a high price to pay. We can also open the door cheerfully to strangers at any hour, deal with obscene telephone calls and mend fuses.
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It was, I saw, a flat to get out of rather than one to stay in. It was a machine for eating and sleeping in, a suitable dwelling place for a working woman, whose main interest is in her work. I disliked this version of myself, which seemed to negate my other activities, reduced them to after-hours amusements, whereas I had always thought them pretty central. These mute, white walls had been silent witnesses to many encounters; nevertheless, they withheld comment, and their very withholding struck me as unfriendly. Unheimlich was the word which came to mind when I stood on the threshold of my bedroom.
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Fiction is the great repository of the moral sense. The wicked get punished.
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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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Quote of the day
The more you learn about the dignity of the gorilla, the more you want to avoid people.
Dian Fossey
Anita Brookner
Born:
July 16, 1928
Died:
March 10, 2016
(aged 87)
Bio:
Anita Brookner is a British award-winning novelist and art historian. She was Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Cambridge from 1967 to 1968 and was the first woman to hold this visiting professorship.
Known for:
Hotel du Lac (1984)
A start in life (1981)
Latecomers (1988)
Lewis Percy (1989)
Misalliance (1986)
Most used words:
women
woman
writing
life
love
thought
people
time
Anita Brookner on Wikipedia
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