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Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.

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
Ruined
Forty
Knew
Literature
Life
Weiss

More quotes by Anita Brookner

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I am 46, and have been for some time past.
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.
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Great writers are the saints for the godless.
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.
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Always let them think of you as singing and dancing.
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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.
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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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For once a thing is known, it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten.
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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Romanticism is not just a mode it literally eats into every life. Women will never get rid of just waiting for the right man.
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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Fiction is the great repository of the moral sense. The wicked get punished.
Anita Brookner
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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.
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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Problems of human behavior still continue to baffle us, but at least in the Library we have them properly filed.
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Satire is dependent on strong beliefs, and on strong beliefs wounded.
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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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I think you always feel braver in another language.
Anita Brookner
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It is best to marry for purely selfish reasons.
Anita Brookner
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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.
Anita Brookner