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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.

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
Probably
Manipulative
Within
Admirable
Whatever
Uses
Woman
Creature
Use
Complete
Women
Creatures
Way
Works
People
System

More quotes by Anita Brookner

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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 think you always feel braver in another language.
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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.
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Always let them think of you as singing and dancing.
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Problems of human behavior still continue to baffle us, but at least in the Library we have them properly filed.
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Great writers are the saints for the godless.
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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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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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Accountability in friendship is the equivalent of love without strategy.
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You can never betray the people who are dead.
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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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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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Romanticism is not just a mode it literally eats into every life. Women will never get rid of just waiting for the right man.
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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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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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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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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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To remain pure, a novel has to cast a moral puzzle. Anything else is mere negotiation.
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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The self-fulfilled woman is far from reality.
Anita Brookner