Top 22 Anita Brookner Quotes

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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