Anita Brookner quotes:

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

You have no idea how promising the world begins to look once you have decided to have it all for yourself. And how much healthier your decisions are once they become entirely selfish.

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

Accountability in friendship is the equivalent of love without strategy.

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.

I was brought up to look after my parents. My family were Polish Jews, and we lived with my grandmother, with uncles and aunts and cousins all around, and I thought everybody lived like that.

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

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

Writing novels preserves you in a state of innocence - a lot passes you by - simply because your attention is otherwise diverted.

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

I never learnt Hebrew because my health was fragile, and it was thought that learning Hebrew would be an added burden. I regret it, because I would like to be able to join in fully. Not that I am a believer, but I would like to be.

Great writers are the saints for the godless.

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.

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

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.

I'm not very popular, because they're bleak and they're mournful and all the rest of it and I get censorious reviews. But I'm only writing fiction. I'm not making munitions, so I think it's acceptable.

In real life, of course, it is the hare that wins. Every time. Look around you.

Old men should have more care to end life well than to live long.

Like many rich men, he thought in anecdotes; like many simple women, she thought in terms of biography.

I was a teacher most of my life, which I loved. I had a very happy working life, and when I retired, I thought I must do something, and I've always read a lot of fiction - you learn so much from fiction. My sentimental education came mostly from fiction, I should say, so I thought I'd try.

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

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

It will be a pity if women in the more conventional mould are to be phased out, for there will never be anyone to go home to.

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.

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

Romanticism is not just a mode; it literally eats into every life. Women will never get rid of just waiting for the right man.

Satire is dependent on strong beliefs, and on strong beliefs wounded.

Always let them think of you as singing and dancing.

I've never got on very well with Jane Austen.

People say that I am always serious and depressing, but it seems to me that the English are never serious - they are flippant, complacent, ineffable, but never serious, which is sometimes maddening.

It is my contention that Aesop was writing for the tortoise market. hares have no time to read.

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

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

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

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.

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.

You are wrong if you think you cannot live without love. I cannot live without it. I do not mean that I go into a decline, develop odd symptoms, became a caricature. I mean that I cannot live well without it. I cannot think or act or speak or write or even dream with any kind of energy in the absence of love. I feel excluded from the living world. I become cold, fish-like, immobile. I implode.

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

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

Fiction is the great repository of the moral sense. The wicked get punished.

I was brought up among the sort of self-important women who had a husband as one has an alibi.

And without understanding, could each properly love the other?

You can never betray the people who are dead.

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.

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.

The self-fulfilled woman is far from reality.

I think you always feel braver in another language.

It is best to marry for purely selfish reasons.

I am not a romantic. I am a domestic animal. I do not sigh and yearn for extravagant displays of passion, for the grand affair, the world well lost for love. I know all that, and know that it leaves you lonely. No, what I crave is the simplicity of routine. An evening walk, arm in arm, in fine weather. A game of cards. Time for idle talk. Preparing a meal together.

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.

Writing has freed me from the despair of living.

To remain pure, a novel has to cast a moral puzzle. Anything else is mere negotiation.

Death is only a small interruption.