103 Quotes by Anita Brookner

I reminded myself of someone, but someone I had not seen for a long time.

And without understanding, could each properly love the other?

That instant proved to me that it was not the first, almost unemotional, sighting of a potential lover that was significant, but the second, the moment not of recognition but of confirmation, so that every other consideration is irrelevant, as if it might have mattered at some point in the past but no longer had any currency in the charged wordless exchange that seals the matter for ever, regardless of the dangers thus incurred and whatever the cost.

The trouble with good manners is that people are persuaded that you are all right, require no protection, are perfectly capable of looking after yourself.

Quarrels can be made up; embarrassment can never quite be forgotten. Edith foresaw, sadly, that she would become an embarrassment.

It is not true that Satan makes work for idle hands to do; that is just what he doesn't. Satan should be at hand with all manner of glittering distractions, false but irresistible promises, inducements to reprehensible behaviour. Instead of which one is simply offered a choice between overwork and half-hearted idleness.

[…] as if the next thing must quickly come along to occupy her, or the abyss might open. What abyss? The abyss that waits for all of us, when all our actions seem futile, when the ability to fill the day seems stalled, and the waiting takes on an edge of dread.

Hartmann had the ideas and Fibich did the worrying: it suited them both perfectly.

Fortunately, common sense asserted itself and I vowed that I should never wait for anyone again.