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
jesus thinking people
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.
growing-up children passion
One loses the capacity to grieve as a child grieves, or to rage as a child rages: hotly, despairingly, with tears of passion. One grows up, one becomes civilized, one learns one's manners, and consequently can no longer manage these two functions - sorrow and anger - adequately.
forgotten known
For once a thing is known, it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten.
women home pity
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.
loneliness irritation needs
I need noise and interruptions and irritation: irritation and discomfort are a great starter. The loneliness of doing it any other way would kill me.
book writing simple
The lessons taught in great books are misleading. The commerce in life is rarely so simple and never so just.
men waiting romance
Romanticism is not just a mode; it literally eats into every life. Women will never get rid of just waiting for the right man.
reality self fulfilled
The self-fulfilled woman is far from reality.
philosophical hero support
Existentialism is about being a saint without God; being your own hero, without all the sanction and support of religion or society.
love moving men
A man can go from being a lover to being a stranger in three moves flat but a woman under the guise of friendship will engage in acts of duplicity which come to light very much later. There are different species of self-justification.
youth sometimes misspent-youth
Time misspent in youth is sometimes all the freedom one ever has.
women people use
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.
light sun grey
That sun, that light had faded, and she had faded with them. Now she was as grey as the season itself.
energy moments circumstances
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 these things to see you through. Circumstances do that.