Quote

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.

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
Things
Game
Venture
Life
Simply
Tends
Games
Sorts
Future
Ball
Business
Balls
Around
Series
Ventures
Whole
Exciting
Unfinished
Always
Walking
Trails

More quotes by Anita Brookner

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Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.
Anita Brookner
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I think you always feel braver in another language.
Anita Brookner
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And without understanding, could each properly love the other?
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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When you make a break for freedom you don't necessarily find company on the way.
Anita Brookner
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I suppose what one wants really is ideal company and books are ideal company.
Anita Brookner
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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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The essence of romantic love is that wonderful beginning, after which sadness and impossibility may become the rule.
Anita Brookner
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No blame should attach to telling the truth. But it does, it does.
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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You can never betray the people who are dead.
Anita Brookner
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Existentialism is about being a saint without God being your own hero, without all the sanction and support of religion or society.
Anita Brookner
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Satire is dependent on strong beliefs, and on strong beliefs wounded.
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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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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Real love is a pilgrimage. It happens when there is no strategy, but it is very rare because most people are strategists.
Anita Brookner
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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.
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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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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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.
Anita Brookner