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

More quotes by Anita Brookner

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Writing has freed me from the despair of living.
Anita Brookner
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A man of such obvious and exemplary charm must be a liar.
Anita Brookner
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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
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And without understanding, could each properly love the other?
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.
Anita Brookner
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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.
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.
Anita Brookner
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Accountability in friendship is the equivalent of love without strategy.
Anita Brookner
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It is best to marry for purely selfish reasons.
Anita Brookner
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I think you always feel braver in another language.
Anita Brookner
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Great writers are the saints for the godless.
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.
Anita Brookner
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I was brought up among the sort of self-important women who had a husband as one has an alibi.
Anita Brookner
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Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.
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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When you make a break for freedom you don't necessarily find company on the way.
Anita Brookner
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Time misspent in youth is sometimes all the freedom one ever has.
Anita Brookner
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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.
Anita Brookner
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Problems of human behavior still continue to baffle us, but at least in the Library we have them properly filed.
Anita Brookner
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For once a thing is known, it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten.
Anita Brookner