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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
Pure
Novel
Puzzle
Moral
Negotiation
Else
Puzzles
Anything
Cast
Writing
Casts
Remain
Mere

More quotes by 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.
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Death is only a small interruption.
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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.
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Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.
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And without understanding, could each properly love the other?
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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.
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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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When you make a break for freedom you don't necessarily find company on the way.
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You can never betray the people who are dead.
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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.
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Time misspent in youth is sometimes all the freedom one ever has.
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I suppose what one wants really is ideal company and books are ideal company.
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The self-fulfilled woman is far from reality.
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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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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.
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For once a thing is known, it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten.
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Problems of human behavior still continue to baffle us, but at least in the Library we have them properly filed.
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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.
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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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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