Anita Brookner Quotes

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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.

  Anita Brookner

  Love, Life, Relationship

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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.

  Anita Brookner

  Real, Writing, Winning

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• Always let them think of you as singing and dancing.

  Anita Brookner

  Dance, Thinking, Dancing

  Anita Brookner (2012). “Dolly”, p.173, Vintage

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• The essence of romantic love is that wonderful beginning, after which sadness and impossibility may become the rule.

  Anita Brookner

  Love, Happiness, Sadness

  Anita Brookner (1987). “A friend from England”, Pantheon

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• What is interesting about self-analysis is that it leads nowhere - it is an art form in itself.

  Anita Brookner

  Art, Self, Interesting

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• You never know what you will learn till you start writing. Then you discover truths you never knew existed.

  Anita Brookner

  Writing, Knows

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• Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.

  Anita Brookner

  Drs, Literature, Ruined

  "A Start in Life". Book by Anita Brookner, 1981.

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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.

  Anita Brookner

  Women, Thinking, Good Woman

  Hotel du Lac (1984) ch. 7

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• Problems of human behavior still continue to baffle us, but at least in the Library we have them properly filed.

  Anita Brookner

  Library, Problem, Behavior

  Anita Brookner (1985). “Look at me”, Plume

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• I suppose what one wants really is ideal company and books are ideal company.

  Anita Brookner

  Book, Want, Company

  "Just don't mention Jane Austen". Interview with Robert McCrum, www.theguardian.com. January 27, 2001.

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• Great writers are the saints for the godless.

  Anita Brookner

  God, Writing, Saint

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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.

  Anita Brookner

  God, Philosophical, Hero

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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.

  Anita Brookner

  Light, Sun, Grey

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• To remain pure, a novel has to cast a moral puzzle. Anything else is mere negotiation.

  Anita Brookner

  Writing, Moral, Negotiation

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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.

  Anita Brookner

  Women, People, Use

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• Writing has freed me from the despair of living.

  Anita Brookner

  Writing, Despair

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• Time misspent in youth is sometimes all the freedom one ever has.

  Anita Brookner

  Time, Freedom, Youth

  Anita Brookner (1986). “The Misalliance”, Pantheon

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• Like many rich men, he thought in anecdotes; like many simple women, she thought in terms of biography.

  Anita Brookner

  Women, Simple, Thinking

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• For once a thing is known, it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten.

  Anita Brookner

  Forgotten, Known

  Anita Brookner (2012). “Look at Me”, p.9, Vintage

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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.

  Anita Brookner

  Love, Friendship, Women

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• Accountability in friendship is the equivalent of love without strategy.

  Anita Brookner

  Love, Friendship, Accountability

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• There are moments when you feel free, moments when you have energy, moments when you have hope, but you can't rely on any of these things to see you through. Circumstances do that.

  Anita Brookner

  Hope, Energy, Moments

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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.

  Anita Brookner

  Love, Dream, Mean

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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.

  Anita Brookner

  Lonely, Passion, Animal

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• The self-fulfilled woman is far from reality.

  Anita Brookner

  Reality, Self, Fulfilled

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