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I am 46, and have been for some time past.

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
Age
Past
Time

More quotes by Anita Brookner

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Great writers are the saints for the godless.
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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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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The lessons taught in great books are misleading. The commerce in life is rarely so simple and never so just.
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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For once a thing is known, it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten.
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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Time misspent in youth is sometimes all the freedom one ever has.
Anita Brookner
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Accountability in friendship is the equivalent of love without strategy.
Anita Brookner
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And without understanding, could each properly love the other?
Anita Brookner
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Always let them think of you as singing and dancing.
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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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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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.
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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Satire is dependent on strong beliefs, and on strong beliefs wounded.
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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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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Writing has freed me from the despair of living.
Anita Brookner
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Fiction is the great repository of the moral sense. The wicked get punished.
Anita Brookner