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For once a thing is known, it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten.

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
Forgotten
Known
Thing
Never
Unknown

More quotes by Anita Brookner

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Writing has freed me from the despair of living.
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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I think you always feel braver in another language.
Anita Brookner
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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.
Anita Brookner
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And without understanding, could each properly love the other?
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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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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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.
Anita Brookner
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The essence of romantic love is that wonderful beginning, after which sadness and impossibility may become the rule.
Anita Brookner
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Death is only a small interruption.
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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I am 46, and have been for some time past.
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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Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.
Anita Brookner
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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.
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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You can never betray the people who are dead.
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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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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What is interesting about self-analysis is that it leads nowhere - it is an art form in itself.
Anita Brookner