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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
World
Decided
Decision
Promising
Idea
Healthier
Become
Selfishness
Ideas
Entirely
Look
Selfish
Looks
Begins
Much
Decisions

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For once a thing is known, it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten.
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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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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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I think you always feel braver in another language.
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Satire is dependent on strong beliefs, and on strong beliefs wounded.
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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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When you make a break for freedom you don't necessarily find company on the way.
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The essence of romantic love is that wonderful beginning, after which sadness and impossibility may become the rule.
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It is best to marry for purely selfish reasons.
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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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You can never betray the people who are dead.
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Fiction is the great repository of the moral sense. The wicked get punished.
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A man of such obvious and exemplary charm must be a liar.
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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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Death is only a small interruption.
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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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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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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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Problems of human behavior still continue to baffle us, but at least in the Library we have them properly filed.
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