Quote

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

Anita Brookner

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

Image
Fiction is the great repository of the moral sense. The wicked get punished.
Anita Brookner
Image
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
Image
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
Image
When you make a break for freedom you don't necessarily find company on the way.
Anita Brookner
Image
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.
Anita Brookner
Image
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
Image
I am 46, and have been for some time past.
Anita Brookner
Image
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
Image
Existentialism is about being a saint without God being your own hero, without all the sanction and support of religion or society.
Anita Brookner
Image
Satire is dependent on strong beliefs, and on strong beliefs wounded.
Anita Brookner
Image
Writing has freed me from the despair of living.
Anita Brookner
Image
It is best to marry for purely selfish reasons.
Anita Brookner
Image
Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.
Anita Brookner
Image
I think you always feel braver in another language.
Anita Brookner
Image
You never know what you will learn till you start writing. Then you discover truths you never knew existed.
Anita Brookner
Image
That sun, that light had faded, and she had faded with them. Now she was as grey as the season itself.
Anita Brookner
Image
I suppose what one wants really is ideal company and books are ideal company.
Anita Brookner
Image
Writing novels preserves you in a state of innocence - a lot passes you by - simply because your attention is otherwise diverted.
Anita Brookner
Image
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.
Anita Brookner
Image
And without understanding, could each properly love the other?
Anita Brookner