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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
Despair
Living
Writing
Freed

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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I suppose what one wants really is ideal company and books are ideal company.
Anita Brookner
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It is best to marry for purely selfish reasons.
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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I think you always feel braver in another language.
Anita Brookner
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Great writers are the saints for the godless.
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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Like many rich men, he thought in anecdotes like many simple women, she thought in terms of biography.
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 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.
Anita Brookner
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Time misspent in youth is sometimes all the freedom one ever has.
Anita Brookner
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A man of such obvious and exemplary charm must be a liar.
Anita Brookner
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No blame should attach to telling the truth. But it does, it does.
Anita Brookner
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You never know what you will learn till you start writing. Then you discover truths you never knew existed.
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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The self-fulfilled woman is far from reality.
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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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.
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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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