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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.

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
Come
Species
Justification
Self
Later
Flats
Different
Friendship
Engage
Much
Woman
Lover
Men
Moving
Moves
Love
Three
Acts
Duplicity
Light
Stranger
Guise
Women
Lovers
Flat

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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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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A man of such obvious and exemplary charm must be a liar.
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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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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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When you make a break for freedom you don't necessarily find company on the way.
Anita Brookner
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To remain pure, a novel has to cast a moral puzzle. Anything else is mere negotiation.
Anita Brookner
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Writing has freed me from the despair of living.
Anita Brookner
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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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Death is only a small interruption.
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Like many rich men, he thought in anecdotes like many simple women, she thought in terms of biography.
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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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I was brought up among the sort of self-important women who had a husband as one has an alibi.
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I think you always feel braver in another language.
Anita Brookner
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Always let them think of you as singing and dancing.
Anita Brookner
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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.
Anita Brookner
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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.
Anita Brookner
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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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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
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I am 46, and have been for some time past.
Anita Brookner