Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

More quotes by Anita Brookner

Image
I am 46, and have been for some time past.
Anita Brookner
Image
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.
Anita Brookner
Image
Real love is a pilgrimage. It happens when there is no strategy, but it is very rare because most people are strategists.
Anita Brookner
Image
Good women always think it is their fault when someone else is being offensive. Bad women never take the blame for anything.
Anita Brookner
Image
Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.
Anita Brookner
Image
Satire is dependent on strong beliefs, and on strong beliefs wounded.
Anita Brookner
Image
Accountability in friendship is the equivalent of love without strategy.
Anita Brookner
Image
Time misspent in youth is sometimes all the freedom one ever has.
Anita Brookner
Image
Writing novels preserves you in a state of innocence - a lot passes you by - simply because your attention is otherwise diverted.
Anita Brookner
Image
No blame should attach to telling the truth. But it does, it does.
Anita Brookner
Image
To remain pure, a novel has to cast a moral puzzle. Anything else is mere negotiation.
Anita Brookner
Image
It is best to marry for purely selfish reasons.
Anita Brookner
Image
Fiction is the great repository of the moral sense. The wicked get punished.
Anita Brookner
Image
Death is only a small interruption.
Anita Brookner
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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.
Anita Brookner
Image
Existentialism is about being a saint without God being your own hero, without all the sanction and support of religion or society.
Anita Brookner
Image
You never know what you will learn till you start writing. Then you discover truths you never knew existed.
Anita Brookner
Image
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.
Anita Brookner