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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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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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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
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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.
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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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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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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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
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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.
Anita Brookner
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It is best to marry for purely selfish reasons.
Anita Brookner
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You can never betray the people who are dead.
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 am 46, and have been for some time past.
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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When you make a break for freedom you don't necessarily find company on the way.
Anita Brookner
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A man of such obvious and exemplary charm must be a liar.
Anita Brookner
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Always let them think of you as singing and dancing.
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, so you go on being a public Jew the dead can't answer slurs, but I'm here. I would love to think that Jesus wants me for a sunbeam, but he doesn't.
Anita Brookner
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I think you always feel braver in another language.
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