To remain pure, a novel has to cast a moral puzzle. Anything else is mere negotiation. — Anita Brookner Copy Share Image
You never know what you will learn till you start writing. Then you discover truths you never knew existed. — Anita Brookner Copy Share Image
If I were happy, married with six children, I wouldn't be writing. And I doubt if I should want to. — Anita Brookner Copy Share Image
It is my contention that Aesop was writing for the tortoise market. hares have no time to read. — Anita Brookner Copy Share Image
Writing novels preserves you in a state of innocence - a lot passes you by - simply because your attention is otherwise… — Anita Brookner Copy Share Image
The evening passes somehow; I watch television with Nancy, or I write. It is difficult, not having a family, and it is… — Anita Brookner Copy Share Image
In real life, it is the hare who wins. Every time. Look around you. And in any case it is my contention… — Anita Brookner Copy Share Image
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… — Anita Brookner Copy Share Image
You are wrong if you think you cannot live without love. I cannot live without it. I do not mean that I… — Anita Brookner Copy Share Image
“It was then that I saw the business of writing for what it truly was and is to me. It is your… — Anita Brookner Copy Share Image
“My idea of absolute happiness is to sit in a hot garden all, reading, or writing, utterly safe in the knowledge that… — Anita Brookner Copy Share Image
If I were happy, married with six children, I wouldn't be writing. And I doubt if I should want to. — Anita Brookner Copy Share
You have no idea how promising the world begins to look once you have decided to have it all for yourself. And how much… — Anita Brookner Copy Share
I never learnt Hebrew because my health was fragile, and it was thought that learning Hebrew would be an added burden. I regret it,… — Anita Brookner Copy Share
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… — Anita Brookner Copy Share
The essence of romantic love is that wonderful beginning, after which sadness and impossibility may become the rule. — Anita Brookner Copy Share
I need noise and interruptions and irritation: irritation and discomfort are a great starter. The loneliness of doing it any other way would kill… — Anita Brookner Copy Share
I am not a romantic. I am a domestic animal. I do not sigh and yearn for extravagant displays of passion, for the grand… — Anita Brookner Copy Share
“It seemed to me that I, rather than he, had brought this about, and my despair was extreme. For now that I knew that… — Anita Brookner Copy Share
I was brought up to look after my parents. My family were Polish Jews, and we lived with my grandmother, with uncles and aunts… — Anita Brookner Copy Share
“We shall none of us ever make love again, she thought, and did not much care. Life had not been too harsh; the sea… — Anita Brookner Copy Share
Good women always think it is their fault when someone else is being offensive. Bad women never take the blame for anything. — Anita Brookner Copy Share
There are moments when you feel free, moments when you have energy, moments when you have hope, but you can't rely on any of… — Anita Brookner Copy Share
