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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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The lessons taught in great books are misleading. The commerce in life is rarely so simple and never so just.
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Time misspent in youth is sometimes all the freedom one ever has.
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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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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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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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I think you always feel braver in another language.
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All good fortune is a gift of the gods, and you don't win the favor of the ancient gods by being good, but by being bold.
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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.
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You can never betray the people who are dead.
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Like many rich men, he thought in anecdotes like many simple women, she thought in terms of biography.
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A man of such obvious and exemplary charm must be a liar.
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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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I suppose what one wants really is ideal company and books are ideal company.
Anita Brookner
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To remain pure, a novel has to cast a moral puzzle. Anything else is mere negotiation.
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Satire is dependent on strong beliefs, and on strong beliefs wounded.
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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.
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What is interesting about self-analysis is that it leads nowhere - it is an art form in itself.
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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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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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The essence of romantic love is that wonderful beginning, after which sadness and impossibility may become the rule.
Anita Brookner