Quotes from Anita Brookner

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.

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.

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.

Great writers are the saints for the godless.

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.

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.

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

Writing has freed me from the despair of living.

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.

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.

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.

The truth I'm trying to convey is not a startling one, it is simply a peeling away of affectation. I use whatever gift I have to get behind the facade.

Time misspent in youth is sometimes all the freedom one ever has; that is why the gods are always young.

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.

It seems to me that the English are never serious--they are flippant, complacent, ineffable, but never serious, which is sometimes maddening.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Accountability in friendship is the equivalent of love without strategy.

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.