Quotes from Anita Brookner

Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.

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.

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

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

Life is a pilgrimage and if you don't play by the rules you don't find the Road to Damascus, you find the Crown of Thorns.

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.

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.

I am 46, and have been for some time past.

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.

It is my contention that Aesop was writing for the tortoise market. hares have no time to read.

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

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.

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've never got on very well with Jane Austen.

Always let them think of you as singing and dancing.

No blame should attach to telling the truth.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Life... is not simply a series of exciting new ventures. The future is not always a whole new ball game. There tends to be unfinished business. One trails all sorts of things around with one, things that simply won't be got rid of.