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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.

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
Jesus
Betrayed
Doesn
Betray
Never
Jew
Would
Answer
Love
Dead
Sunbeam
Think
Wants
Slurs
Thinking
Answers
Sunbeams
People
Public
Judaism

More quotes by Anita Brookner

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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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Time misspent in youth is sometimes all the freedom one ever has.
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I am 46, and have been for some time past.
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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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The self-fulfilled woman is far from reality.
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And without understanding, could each properly love the other?
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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.
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Fiction is the great repository of the moral sense. The wicked get punished.
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Always let them think of you as singing and dancing.
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I think you always feel braver in another language.
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Death is only a small interruption.
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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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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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Satire is dependent on strong beliefs, and on strong beliefs wounded.
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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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I suppose what one wants really is ideal company and books are ideal company.
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Great writers are the saints for the godless.
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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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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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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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