Quotes by Anita Brookner

About Anita Brookner:

Anita Brookner is a British award-winning novelist and art historian. She was Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Cambridge from 1967 to 1968 and was the first woman to hold this visiting professorship. She was awarded the 1984 Man Booker Prize for her novel Hotel du Lac.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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 fict...

Anita Brookner

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

Anita Brookner

Great writers are the saints for the godless.

Anita Brookner

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.

Anita Brookner

Accountability in friendship is the equivalent of love without strategy.

Anita Brookner

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

Anita Brookner

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

Anita Brookner

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

Anita Brookner

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.

Anita Brookner

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.

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

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

Anita Brookner

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

Anita Brookner

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

Anita Brookner

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

Anita Brookner

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

Anita Brookner

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.

Anita Brookner

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

Anita Brookner

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.

Anita Brookner

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

Anita Brookner

I'm a middle-class, middle-brow novelist. And that's it. It amuses me.

Anita Brookner

Author Bio

  • NameAnita Brookner
  • DescriptionBritish novelist and art historian.
  • BornJuly 16, 1928
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionWriter; Art Historian; Novelist
  • AwardsCommander Of The Order Of The British Empire