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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
Known
Thing
Never
Unknown
Forgotten

More quotes by 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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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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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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Like many rich men, he thought in anecdotes like many simple women, she thought in terms of biography.
Anita Brookner
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Great writers are the saints for the godless.
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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Existentialism is about being a saint without God being your own hero, without all the sanction and support of religion or society.
Anita Brookner
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It is best to marry for purely selfish reasons.
Anita Brookner
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I suppose what one wants really is ideal company and books are ideal company.
Anita Brookner
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And without understanding, could each properly love the other?
Anita Brookner
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Accountability in friendship is the equivalent of love without strategy.
Anita Brookner
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You can never betray the people who are dead.
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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That sun, that light had faded, and she had faded with them. Now she was as grey as the season itself.
Anita Brookner
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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.
Anita Brookner
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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.
Anita Brookner
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Time misspent in youth is sometimes all the freedom one ever has.
Anita Brookner
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I think you always feel braver in another language.
Anita Brookner
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Always let them think of you as singing and dancing.
Anita Brookner