Anita Brookner Quotes

Women share their sadness, thought Edith. Their joy they like to show off to one another. Victory, t...

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

They had waited for too long, and the result was this hiatus, and the reflection that time and patie...

Literature for me was a magnificent destiny for which I was not yet fully prepared. 76

I was a teacher most of my life, which I loved. I had a very happy working life, and when I retired,...

All good fortune is a gift of the gods and ... you don't win the favor of the ancient gods by being...

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

No blame should attach to telling the truth.

Existentialism is about being a saint without God; being your own hero, without all the sanction and...

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

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

Not everyone is born to fulfill an heroic role. The only realistic ambition is to live in the presen...

Accountability in friendship is the equivalent of love without strategy.

Always let them think of you as singing and dancing.

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

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

And without understanding, could each properly love the other?

[…] nobody grows up. Everyone carries around all the selves that they have ever been, intact, waitin...

Of course, the spectacle of two people's happiness is always something of a magnet for the unclaimed...

You get a lot of borderline cases in libraries.

Boundaries keep people out mine served only to keep me in.

As a devil's advocate Mr Neville was faultless. And yet, she knew, there was a flaw in his reasoning...

You are wrong if you think you cannot live without love, Edith.''No, I am not,' she said, slowly. 'I...

I reflected how easy it is for a man to reduce women of a certain age to imbecility. All he has to d...

I think that those few words were my greatest mistake.

Old times, sad times. I feel better about them now than I did then.

I remember at that time I went to the hairdresser's. I did this regularly, but I remember that visit...