Quote

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

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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
Every
Winning
Hares
Time
Games
Contention
Life
Read
Wins
Around
Market
Look
Busy
Aesop
Looks
Case
Tortoise
Real
Cases
Tortoises
Writing
Game
Hare

More quotes by Anita Brookner

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The self-fulfilled woman is far from reality.
Anita Brookner
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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
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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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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.
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Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.
Anita Brookner
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I was brought up among the sort of self-important women who had a husband as one has an alibi.
Anita Brookner
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The lessons taught in great books are misleading. The commerce in life is rarely so simple and never so just.
Anita Brookner
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Great writers are the saints for the godless.
Anita Brookner
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To remain pure, a novel has to cast a moral puzzle. Anything else is mere negotiation.
Anita Brookner
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When you make a break for freedom you don't necessarily find company on the way.
Anita Brookner
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You can never betray the people who are dead.
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For once a thing is known, it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten.
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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
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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.
Anita Brookner
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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
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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.
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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What is interesting about self-analysis is that it leads nowhere - it is an art form in itself.
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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Real love is a pilgrimage. It happens when there is no strategy, but it is very rare because most people are strategists.
Anita Brookner