If I were happy, married with six children, I wouldn't be writing. And I doubt if I should want to.
— Anita Brookner
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.
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.
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.
You never know what you will learn till you start writing. Then you discover truths you never knew existed.
Time misspent in youth is sometimes all the freedom one ever has.
Good women always think it is their fault when someone else is being offensive. Bad women never take the blame for anything.
Existentialism is about being a saint without God; being your own hero, without all the sanction and support of religion or society.
What is interesting about self-analysis is that it leads nowhere - it is an art form in itself.
Writing novels preserves you in a state of innocence - a lot passes you by - simply because your attention is otherwise diverted.
The lessons taught in great books are misleading. The commerce in life is rarely so simple and never so just.
People say that I am always serious and depressing, but it seems to me that the English are never serious - they are flippant, complacent, ineffable, but never serious, which is sometimes maddening.
I'm a middle-class, middle-brow novelist. And that's it. It amuses me.
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.
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.
In real life, of course, it is the hare that wins. Every time. Look around you.
Great writers are the saints for the godless.
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.
Real love is a pilgrimage. It happens when there is no strategy, but it is very rare because most people are strategists.
All good fortune is a gift of the gods, and you don't win the favor of the ancient gods by being good, but by being bold.
No blame should attach to telling the truth. But it does, it does.
Old men should have more care to end life well than to live long.
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.
I've never got on very well with Jane Austen.
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.
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.
The essence of romantic love is that wonderful beginning, after which sadness and impossibility may become the rule.
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.
Like many rich men, he thought in anecdotes; like many simple women, she thought in terms of biography.
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.
Accountability in friendship is the equivalent of love without strategy.
A man of such obvious and exemplary charm must be a liar.
It is my contention that Aesop was writing for the tortoise market. hares have no time to read.
