Brian Ferguson

“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

“I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

“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

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