103 Quotes by 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.

What is interesting about self-analysis is that it leads nowhere - it is an art form in itself.

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.

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.

You never know what you will learn till you start writing. Then you discover truths you never knew existed.

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.

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.

Death is only a small interruption.