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
Anita Brookner quotes about
selfish ideas decision
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.
betrayal people sunbeams
You can never betray the people who are dead.
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.
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.
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.
I'm a middle-class, middle-brow novelist. And that's it. It amuses me.
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.
came education fiction happy learn life mostly teacher
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.
contention english-historian time
It is my contention that Aesop was writing for the tortoise market. hares have no time to read.
english-historian
In real life, of course, it is the hare that wins. Every time. Look around you.
added health hebrew join learning learnt
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.
english-historian life men
Old men should have more care to end life well than to live long.
people seems
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.
aunts brought everybody family lived polish uncles
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.