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
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.
thinking language feels
I think you always feel braver in another language.
women simple thinking
Like many rich men, he thought in anecdotes; like many simple women, she thought in terms of biography.
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.
dance thinking dancing
Always let them think of you as singing and dancing.
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.