Quote

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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Anita Brookner
Age: 87 †
Born: 1928
Born: July 16
Died: 2016
Died: March 10
Art Historian
Novelist
University Teacher
Writer
London
England
Novel
Simply
Attention
Diverted
State
Passes
States
Preserves
Writing
Novels
Innocence
Otherwise

More quotes by Anita Brookner

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Death is only a small interruption.
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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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The self-fulfilled woman is far from reality.
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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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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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I think you always feel braver in another language.
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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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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.
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When you make a break for freedom you don't necessarily find company on the way.
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For once a thing is known, it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten.
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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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Accountability in friendship is the equivalent of love without strategy.
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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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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.
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A man of such obvious and exemplary charm must be a liar.
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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.
Anita Brookner
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Fiction is the great repository of the moral sense. The wicked get punished.
Anita Brookner
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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.
Anita Brookner
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The essence of romantic love is that wonderful beginning, after which sadness and impossibility may become the rule.
Anita Brookner