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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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Anita Brookner
Age: 87 †
Born: 1928
Born: July 16
Died: 2016
Died: March 10
Art Historian
Novelist
University Teacher
Writer
London
England
Ideas
Entirely
Look
Selfish
Looks
Begins
Much
Decisions
World
Decided
Decision
Promising
Idea
Healthier
Become
Selfishness

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I suppose what one wants really is ideal company and books are ideal company.
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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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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.
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Death is only a small interruption.
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No blame should attach to telling the truth. But it does, it does.
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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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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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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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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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Always let them think of you as singing and dancing.
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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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Fiction is the great repository of the moral sense. The wicked get punished.
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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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The self-fulfilled woman is far from reality.
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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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Time misspent in youth is sometimes all the freedom one ever has.
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Accountability in friendship is the equivalent of love without strategy.
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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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Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.
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Like many rich men, he thought in anecdotes like many simple women, she thought in terms of biography.
Anita Brookner