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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.

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
Saint
God
Hero
Support
Society
Sanction
Religion
Existentialism
Without
Sanctions
Philosophical

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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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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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The lessons taught in great books are misleading. The commerce in life is rarely so simple and never so just.
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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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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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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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Problems of human behavior still continue to baffle us, but at least in the Library we have them properly filed.
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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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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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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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It is best to marry for purely selfish reasons.
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A man of such obvious and exemplary charm must be a liar.
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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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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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And without understanding, could each properly love the other?
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Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.
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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.
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You never know what you will learn till you start writing. Then you discover truths you never knew existed.
Anita Brookner