Anita Brookner
Anita Brookner
Anita Brookner, CBEwas 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...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionHistorian
Date of Birth16 July 1938
art form leads nowhere
What is interesting about self-analysis is that it leads nowhere -- it is an art form in itself.
bleak
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.
I'm a middle-class, middle-brow novelist. And that's it. It amuses me.
interruptions
Death is only a small interruption.
lonely passion animal
I am not a romantic. I am a domestic animal. I do not sigh and yearn for extravagant displays of passion, for the grand affair, the world well lost for love. I know all that, and know that it leaves you lonely. No, what I crave is the simplicity of routine. An evening walk, arm in arm, in fine weather. A game of cards. Time for idle talk. Preparing a meal together.
selfish reason selfish-reasons
It is best to marry for purely selfish reasons.
strong belief satire
Satire is dependent on strong beliefs, and on strong beliefs wounded.
monday morning writing
The evening passes somehow; I watch television with Nancy, or I write. It is difficult, not having a family, and it is difficult to explain. I always go to bed early. And I am always ready for Monday morning, that time that other people dread.
life play thorns
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.
love dream mean
You are wrong if you think you cannot live without love. I cannot live without it. I do not mean that I go into a decline, develop odd symptoms, became a caricature. I mean that I cannot live well without it. I cannot think or act or speak or write or even dream with any kind of energy in the absence of love. I feel excluded from the living world. I become cold, fish-like, immobile. I implode.
wicked fiction moral
Fiction is the great repository of the moral sense. The wicked get punished.
liars lying men
A man of such obvious and exemplary charm must be a liar.
women thinking good-woman
Good women always think it is their fault when someone else is being offensive. Bad women never take the blame for anything.
writing moral negotiation
To remain pure, a novel has to cast a moral puzzle. Anything else is mere negotiation.