103 Quotes by Anita Brookner

That sun, that light had faded, and she had faded with them. Now she was as grey as the season itself.

Women share their sadness, thought Edith. Their joy they like to show off to one another. Victory, triumph over the odds, calls for an audience. And that air of bustle and exigence sometimes affected by the sexually loquacious - that is for the benefit of other women. No solidarity then.

[...] no man is free of his own history.

Aesop was writing for the tortoise market. Axiomatically, hares have no time to read. They are too busy winning the game. The propaganda goes all the other way, but only because it is the tortoise who is in need of consolation. Like the meek who are going to inherit the earth.

Old times, sad times. I feel better about them now than I did then.

Of course, the spectacle of two people's happiness is always something of a magnet for the unclaimed.

Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature

Not everyone is born to fulfill an heroic role. The only realistic ambition is to live in the present. And sometimes, quite often in fact, this is more than enough to keep one busy. Time, which was once squandered, must now be given over to the actual, the possible, and perhaps that evanescent hope of a good outcome which never deserts one, and which should never be abandoned.

You get a lot of borderline cases in libraries.