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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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Writing has freed me from the despair of living.
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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Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.
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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No blame should attach to telling the truth. But it does, it does.
Anita Brookner
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It is best to marry for purely selfish reasons.
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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The self-fulfilled woman is far from reality.
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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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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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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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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Always let them think of you as singing and dancing.
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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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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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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A man of such obvious and exemplary charm must be a liar.
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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To remain pure, a novel has to cast a moral puzzle. Anything else is mere negotiation.
Anita Brookner