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.

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

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

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

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

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

Great writers are the saints for the godless.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

You can never betray the people who are dead.

The lessons taught in great books are misleading. The commerce in life is rarely so simple and never so just.

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.

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.

Existentialism is about being a saint without God; being your own hero, without all the sanction and support of religion or society.

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

Writing has freed me from the despair of living.

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.

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

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

And without understanding, could each properly love the other?

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

I was brought up among the sort of self-important women who had a husband as one has an alibi.

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.

I think you always feel braver in another language.

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

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

Death is only a small interruption.

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

It is best to marry for purely selfish reasons.

As a devil's advocate Mr Neville was faultless. And yet, she knew, there was a flaw in his reasoning, just as there was a flaw in his ability to feel.

Of course, the spectacle of two people's happiness is always something of a magnet for the unclaimed.

Old times, sad times. I feel better about them now than I did then.

I think that those few words were my greatest mistake.

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

You get a lot of borderline cases in libraries.

Literature for me was a magnificent destiny for which I was not yet fully prepared. 76

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.