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

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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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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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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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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.
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You never know what you will learn till you start writing. Then you discover truths you never knew existed.
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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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To remain pure, a novel has to cast a moral puzzle. Anything else is mere negotiation.
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You can never betray the people who are dead.
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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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The lessons taught in great books are misleading. The commerce in life is rarely so simple and never so just.
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I think you always feel braver in another language.
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Fiction is the great repository of the moral sense. The wicked get punished.
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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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What is interesting about self-analysis is that it leads nowhere - it is an art form in itself.
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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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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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Accountability in friendship is the equivalent of love without strategy.
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A man of such obvious and exemplary charm must be a liar.
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When you make a break for freedom you don't necessarily find company on the way.
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