Anita Brookner Quotes

Real love is a pilgrimage. It happens when there is no strategy, but it is very rare because most people are strategists.

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.

You never know what you will learn till you start writing. Then you discover truths you never knew existed.

No blame should attach to telling the truth. But it does, it does.

Always let them think of you as singing and dancing.

Problems of human behavior still continue to baffle us, but at least in the Library we have them properly filed.

I suppose what one wants really is ideal company and books are ideal company.

Existentialism is about being a saint without God; being your own hero, without all the sanction and support of religion or society.

For once a thing is known, it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten.

Writing has freed me from the despair of living.

Time misspent in youth is sometimes all the freedom one ever has.

The essence of romantic love is that wonderful beginning, after which sadness and impossibility may become the rule.

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.

Good women always think it is their fault when someone else is being offensive. Bad women never take the blame for anything.

Great writers are the saints for the godless.

When you make a break for freedom you don't necessarily find company on the way.

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.

Accountability in friendship is the equivalent of love without strategy.

A man of such obvious and exemplary charm must be a liar.

You can never betray the people who are dead.

That sun, that light had faded, and she had faded with them. Now she was as grey as the season itself.

What is interesting about self-analysis is that it leads nowhere - it is an art form in itself.

It is best to marry for purely selfish reasons.

The lessons taught in great books are misleading. The commerce in life is rarely so simple and never so just.

Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.