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Time misspent in youth is sometimes all the freedom one ever has.

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
Freedom
Ever
Sometimes
Time
Misspent
Youth

More quotes by 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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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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Always let them think of you as singing and dancing.
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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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The lessons taught in great books are misleading. The commerce in life is rarely so simple and never so just.
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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.
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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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Satire is dependent on strong beliefs, and on strong beliefs wounded.
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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 was brought up among the sort of self-important women who had a husband as one has an alibi.
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Great writers are the saints for the godless.
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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.
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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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What is interesting about self-analysis is that it leads nowhere - it is an art form in itself.
Anita Brookner
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I am 46, and have been for some time past.
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 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.
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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I suppose what one wants really is ideal company and books are ideal company.
Anita Brookner