Anita Brookner > Quotes

“Good women always think it is their fault when someone else is being offensive. Bad women never take the blame for anything.”
― Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac

“My idea of absolute happiness is to sit in a hot garden all, reading, or writing, utterly safe in the knowledge that the person I love will come home to me in the evening. Every evening.'

'You are a romantic, Edith,' repeated Mr Neville, with a smile.

'It is you who are wrong,' she replied. 'I have been listening to that particular accusation for most of my life. 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.”
― Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac

“It was then that I saw the business of writing for what it truly was and is to me. It is your penance for not being lucky. It is an attempt to reach others and to make them love you. It is your instinctive protest, when you find you have no voice at the world's tribunals, and that no one will speak for you. I would give my entire output of words, past, present and to come, in exchange for easier access to the world, for permission to state "I hurt" or " I hate" or " I want". Or indeed, "Look at me". And I do not go back on this. For once a thing is known it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten. And writing is the enemy of forgetfulness, or thoughtlessness. For the writer there is no oblivion. Only endless memory.”
― Anita Brookner, Look at Me

“Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature”
― Anita Brookner, A Start in Life

“A woman owes it to herself to have pretty things. And if she feels good she looks good.

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 symptons, 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. My idea of absolute happiness is to sit in a hot garden all day, reading or writing, utterly safe in the knowledge that the person I love will come home to me in the evening. Every evening. I am not a romantic. I am a domesticated 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.”
― Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac

“For once a thing is known, it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten.”
― Anita Brookner, Look at Me

“I suppose what one wants really is ideal company and books are ideal company.”
― Anita Brookner

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

“[…] as if the next thing must quickly come along to occupy her, or the abyss might open. What abyss? The abyss that waits for all of us, when all our actions seem futile, when the ability to fill the day seems stalled, and the waiting takes on an edge of dread. ”
― Anita Brookner, Latecomers

“That sun, that light had faded, and she had faded with them. Now she was as grey as the season itself.”
― Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac

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

”
― Anita Brookner

“[…] nobody grows up. Everyone carries around all the selves that they have ever been, intact, waiting to be reactivated in moments of pain, of fear, of danger. Everything is retrievable, every shock, every hurt. But perhaps it becomes a duty to abandon the stock of time that one carries within oneself, to discard it in favour of the present, so that one’s embrace may be turned outwards to the world in which one has made one’s home.”
― Anita Brookner, Latecomers

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

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

“Fiction, the time-honoured resource of the ill-at-ease, would have to come to her aid,”
― Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac

“In real life, of course, it is the hare that wins. Every time. Look around you.”
― Anita Brookner

“And without understanding, could each properly love the other?”
― Anita Brookner, Latecomers

“The trouble with good manners is that people are persuaded that you are all right, require no protection, are perfectly capable of looking after yourself.”
― Anita Brookner, Look at Me

“[...] death is only a small interruption.”
― Anita Brookner, Latecomers

“You are wrong if you think you cannot live without love, Edith.'
'No, I am not,' she said, slowly. 'I cannot live without it. Oh, I do not mean that I go into a decline, develop odd symptoms, become a caricature. I mean something far more serious than that. 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. My idea of absolute happiness is to sit in a hot garden all day, reading or writing, utterly safe in the knowledge that the person I love will come home to me in the evening. Every evening.'
'You are a romantic, Edith,' repeated Mr Neville, with a smile.
'It is you who are wrong,' she replied. 'I have been listening to that particular accusation for most of my life. 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.”
― Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac

“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, Look at Me

“But it was a significant exercise, for it meant that I considered myself worthy, as I had never done before. That change in my consciousness was so bewildering that I looked back on my previous life with a sort of amazed pity. That narrowness, those scruples, that prolonged childhood... I even, and this is a great test, began to consider journeys I might make, for my own pleasure, without him. I had never been to Greece and I thought I might go now, some time soon. And I knew that if I went I should enjoy it, as I had never enjoyed a journey before. Because I should have James to come back to. By the very fact of his existence, he had given the validity to my entire future.”
― Anita Brookner, Look at Me

“You have no idea how promising the world begins to looks once you have decided to have it all for yourself. And how much healthier your decisions are once they become entirely selfish. It is the simplest thing in the world to decide what you want to do - or, rather, what you don't want to do - and just to act on that.”
― Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac

“My idea of absolute happiness is to sit in a hot garden all day, reading, or writing, utterly safe in the knowledge that the person I love will come home to me in the evening. Every evening.”
― Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac

“Not everyone is born to fulfill an heroic role. The only realistic ambition is to live in the present. And sometimes, quite often in fact, this is more than enough to keep one busy. Time, which was once squandered, must now be given over to the actual, the possible, and perhaps that evanescent hope of a good outcome which never deserts one, and which should never be abandoned.”
― Anita Brookner

“[...] no man is free of his own history.”
― Anita Brookner, Latecomers

“I have been too harsh on women, she thought, because I understand them better than I understand men. I know their watchfulness, their patience, their need to advertise themselves as successful. Their need never to admit to a failure. I know all that because I am one of them.”
― Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac

“Love imposes obligations and these are constant. An intermittent lover is no use to a person of dignity and courage.”
― Anita Brookner, The Debut

“I could not, somehow, make contact with any familiar emotion. As I lingered in front of a lighted window, apparently beguiled by a pair of burgundy leather shoes, I could only identify a feeling of exclusion. I felt as if the laws of the universe no longer applied to me, since I was outside the normal frames of reference. A biological nonentity, to be phased out. And somewhere, intruding helplessly and to no avail into my consciousness, the anger of the underdog, plotting bloody revolution, plotting revenge.”
― Anita Brookner, Look at Me

“ Siz bir romantiksiniz, Edith," diyerek sözünü yineledi Mr.Neville gülümseyerek.
"Yanılan sizsiniz," diye yanıtladı Edith. "Ömrüm boyunca bu suçlamayı dinledim durdum.Romantik değilim ben.Ben, evcil bir hayvanım. Ahlayıp ohlayıp taşkın tutku gösterilerinin, büyük aşkların özlemini çekmiyorum, aşk için dünyayı hepten gözden çıkarmıyorum. Bütün bunları biliyorum ve bunun insanı yapayalnız bıraktığını da biliyorum. Hayır, benim can attığım şey rutin yaşamın yalınlığı. Güzel bir havada kol kola bir akşam yürüyüşü.Bir iskambil oyunu. Gevezelik etmek. Bir yemeği birlikte hazırlamak”
― Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac