Quotes from Anita Brookner

Only the fantasy of choice remained.

And the curious thing was that Dr Weiss had never met anyone, man or woman, friend or colleague, who could stand literature when not on the page.

Owen had come along and I had fallen in love with him. I had not known then that it is not necessary to marry every man one loves. I know it now. Now I realize that it is marriage which is the great temptation for a woman, and that one can, and perhaps should, resist

He had, in the past, wanted to be kind, and, as ever, had supplied the wrong sort of kindness.

Suddenly he longed for her return. She was his familiar, and by the same token his harshest critic. But even that harshness would be welcome on a day like today, when old associations were being stripped from him.

Maybe women were more realistic than men, maybe that was why they lived longer. But what hell they must endure in their selfishly guarded but lamentable old age.

To Penelope, men were conquests, attributes, but they were also enemies; they belonged to the species that must never be granted more than the amount of time and attention she considered they deserved.

The amount of time she had at her disposal made it difficult for her to be late for anything, even for her own breakfast. And she suspected that even if she were to waste time she would still find a way to be entirely punctual, to the intense annoyance of those who had never mastered the art. For it was an art, less to do with courtesy than with modesty. Only grander personalities could afford to assume that others would wait.

In any event I kept this to myself, for I learned very quickly that I must never criticize. For happy and successful people, Nick and Alix were extraordinarily sensitive to criticism, and I learned not to look askance at her when she claimed to have come down in the world or complained of Maria or even of Nick, whose work occupied a good deal of his attention, attention which she thought should have been devoted entirely to herself.

Women share their sadness, thought Edith. Their joy they like to show off to one another. Victory, triumph over the odds, calls for an audience. And that air of bustle and exigence sometimes affected by the sexually loquacious - that is for the benefit of other women. No solidarity then.

With confidence and the right assumptions, thought Kitty Maule, I dare say you don't need to live on faith at all. As, oddly enough, I do.

If, as we have it on the highest authority, there is more joy in Heaven over one sinner that repenteth, why not sin, provisionally? Why not break the rules, like that Prodigal Son (so much more amusing than his tedious brother) who must have attended so many parties like this evening's, and who still came home to enjoy the fatted calf? Because they had felt so dull without him. So extremely bored with only the spectacle of virtue and hard work to beguile them.

but you've been a fool. Some women take advantage. Once they're married, and they've got a good husband, they think they can do what they like. And if they take him for granted-" she paused significantly- "they just don't bother anymore.

They sat in silence until it was time for her to go. 'Go before he gets back,' said her mother. They stood up, embraced. Merle was shockingly aware of her daughter's changed appearance. 'Poor child, poor child,' she said. 'But she was a young woman,' protested Harriet. 'A beautiful young woman.' 'No, dear,' said her mother sadly. 'I meant you.

Let me tell you what you need, Edith, he said. Not again, she thought. I have just told you what I need and I know what that is better than you do. 'Yes, I know you think you know better than I do,' he said, as her head shot up in alarm.

Aesop was writing for the tortoise market. Axiomatically, hares have no time to read. They are too busy winning the game. The propaganda goes all the other way, but only because it is the tortoise who is in need of consolation. Like the meek who are going to inherit the earth.

The company of their own sex, Edith reflected, was what drove many women into marriage.

Yet for all her solitariness, or her self-sufficiency, she lacked an overriding philosophy to help her deal with encroachments, incursions, and thus fell at the first fence.

and, after satisfying himself that the business was being looked after, disappeared again into the busy street. They suspected that their days in Hilltop Road were numbered, that Ostrovski would dispossess

If she had had daughters, Beatrice reflected, what advice she would have given them! She would have told them that the time for display was limited, that the years would add weight, both physically and metaphorically, that a time would come when second thoughts were wiser than heedless impulses Ã¢â'¬Â¦ She would have urged them to enjoy men, as many men as possible, before they became aware, as she was now, of the neutered state that awaited them.

Of course, the spectacle of two people's happiness is always something of a magnet for the unclaimed.

Besides, kindness, of the same undiscriminating sort, is not what one is looking for in a man, though perhaps it should be. One rather looks for its opposite, a certain combative excitement. Now I had captive in my own home a man who had probably never understood this.

Perhaps what I was registering was nothing more than the passage of time, to which one should pay great attention, lest one remain fixed in past expectations, without noticing how foolish one had become.

Some time ago she had tried to substitute irony for longing, and had almost succeeded. That was why this alternative life so nearly appealed to her.