Anita Brookner Quotes

Real love is a pilgrimage. It happens when there is no strategy, but it is very rare because most people are strategists.

Good women always think it is their fault when someone else is being offensive.

Bad women never take the blame for anything.

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

Romanticism is not just a mode; it literally eats into every life. Women will never get rid of just waiting for the right man.

Accountability in friendship is the equivalent of love without strategy.

Always let them think of you as singing and dancing.

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.

A man of such obvious and exemplary charm must be a liar.

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

She was a handsome woman of forty-five and would remain so for many years.

The lessons taught in great books are misleading.

The commerce in life is rarely so simple and never so just.

Existentialism is about being a saint without God;

being your own hero, without all the sanction and support of religion or society.

You can never betray the people who are dead, so you go on being a public Jew;

the dead can't answer slurs, but I'm here. I would love to think that Jesus wants me for a sunbeam, but he doesn't.

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

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.

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.

No blame should attach to telling the truth. But it does, it does.

You can never betray the people who are dead.

All good fortune is a gift of the gods, and you don't win the favor of the ancient gods by being good, but by being bold.

Great writers are the saints for the godless.

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.

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.

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

It is my contention that Aesop was writing for the tortoise market. hares have no time to read.

Satire is dependent on strong beliefs, and on strong beliefs wounded.

Writing novels preserves you in a state of innocence -- a lot passes you by -- simply because your attention is otherwise diverted.

Fiction is the great repository of the moral sense. The wicked get punished.

Death is only a small interruption.

And without understanding, could each properly love the other?

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.

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

It is best to marry for purely selfish reasons.

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.

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.

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

I am 46, and have been for some time past.

Writing has freed me from the despair of living.

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

I think you always feel braver in another language.

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

When you make a break for freedom you don't necessarily find company on the way.

That sun, that light had faded, and she had faded with them. Now she was as grey as the season itself.

Writing novels preserves you in a state of innocence - a lot passes you by - simply because your attention is otherwise diverted.

The self-fulfilled woman is far from reality.

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.

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

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.

I need noise and interruptions and irritation: irritation and discomfort are a great starter. The loneliness of doing it any other way would kill me.

One loses the capacity to grieve as a child grieves, or to rage as a child rages: hotly, despairingly, with tears of passion. One grows up, one becomes civilized, one learns one's manners, and consequently can no longer manage these two functions - sorrow and anger - adequately.