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Writing has freed me from the despair of living.

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
Freed
Despair
Living
Writing

More quotes by 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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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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It is best to marry for purely selfish reasons.
Anita Brookner
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The lessons taught in great books are misleading. The commerce in life is rarely so simple and never so just.
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Fiction is the great repository of the moral sense. The wicked get punished.
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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.
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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.
Anita Brookner
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Great writers are the saints for the godless.
Anita Brookner
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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.
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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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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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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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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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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Time misspent in youth is sometimes all the freedom one ever has.
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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Always let them think of you as singing and dancing.
Anita Brookner
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Satire is dependent on strong beliefs, and on strong beliefs wounded.
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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Like many rich men, he thought in anecdotes like many simple women, she thought in terms of biography.
Anita Brookner