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Accountability in friendship is the equivalent of love without strategy.

Anita Brookner

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Anita Brookner
Age: 87 †
Born: 1928
Born: July 16
Died: 2016
Died: March 10
Art Historian
Novelist
University Teacher
Writer
London
England
Strategy
Friendship
Friends
Without
Love
Equivalent
Accountability

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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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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.
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I think you always feel braver in another language.
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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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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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The lessons taught in great books are misleading. The commerce in life is rarely so simple and never so just.
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Writing has freed me from the despair of living.
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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.
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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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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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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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Writing novels preserves you in a state of innocence - a lot passes you by - simply because your attention is otherwise diverted.
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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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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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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.
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To remain pure, a novel has to cast a moral puzzle. Anything else is mere negotiation.
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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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The essence of romantic love is that wonderful beginning, after which sadness and impossibility may become the rule.
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I suppose what one wants really is ideal company and books are ideal company.
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Death is only a small interruption.
Anita Brookner