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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
Unknown
Forgotten
Known
Thing
Never

More quotes by 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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Writing has freed me from the despair of living.
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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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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Great writers are the saints for the godless.
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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Good women always think it is their fault when someone else is being offensive. Bad women never take the blame for anything.
Anita Brookner
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Accountability in friendship is the equivalent of love without strategy.
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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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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And without understanding, could each properly love the other?
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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Like many rich men, he thought in anecdotes like many simple women, she thought in terms of biography.
Anita Brookner
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No blame should attach to telling the truth. But it does, it does.
Anita Brookner
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Always let them think of you as singing and dancing.
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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I am 46, and have been for some time past.
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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Death is only a small interruption.
Anita Brookner
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It is best to marry for purely selfish reasons.
Anita Brookner