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I suppose what one wants really is ideal company and books are ideal company.

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
Suppose
Ideals
Wants
Books
Company
Book
Really
Ideal

More quotes by Anita Brookner

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You can never betray the people who are dead.
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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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Satire is dependent on strong beliefs, and on strong beliefs wounded.
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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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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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Accountability in friendship is the equivalent of love without strategy.
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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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Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.
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Great writers are the saints for the godless.
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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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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 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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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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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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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.
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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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Fiction is the great repository of the moral sense. The wicked get punished.
Anita Brookner
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Writing has freed me from the despair of living.
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.
Anita Brookner