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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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Anita Brookner
Age: 87 †
Born: 1928
Born: July 16
Died: 2016
Died: March 10
Art Historian
Novelist
University Teacher
Writer
London
England
Remain
Mere
Pure
Novel
Puzzle
Moral
Negotiation
Else
Puzzles
Anything
Cast
Writing
Casts

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For once a thing is known, it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten.
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I think you always feel braver in another language.
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No blame should attach to telling the truth. But it does, it does.
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When you make a break for freedom you don't necessarily find company on the way.
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Time misspent in youth is sometimes all the freedom one ever has.
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Fiction is the great repository of the moral sense. The wicked get punished.
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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.
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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.
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You can never betray the people who are dead.
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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.
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You never know what you will learn till you start writing. Then you discover truths you never knew existed.
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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.
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The self-fulfilled woman is far from reality.
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Great writers are the saints for the godless.
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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.
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Satire is dependent on strong beliefs, and on strong beliefs wounded.
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Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.
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I was brought up among the sort of self-important women who had a husband as one has an alibi.
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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.
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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.
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