Anita Brookner

“Reading a book is a dangerous thing, because you can be changed by it.”

“The single state is a perpetual infancy.”

“It is not my intention to be fulsome, but I confess that I covet your skull.”

“For a woman to be romantic is to be a victim.”

“People who are not in love fail to understand how an intelligent man can suffer because of a very ordinary woman.”

“Once the cards are dealt we have to play them, we can’t start all over again.”

“The most corrupting attribute of all is power.”

“For the first time in my life I was admitting to myself that I was not a nice person.”

“Happiness is a matter of one's most ordinary everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self.”

“There is nothing so daunting as a new beginning.”

“A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author’s soul.”

“My heroines are all displaced women.”

“I have no imagination. I have a great deal of observation.”

“Loneliness is not a treatable disease.”

“I am a connoisseur of disappointment.”

“In the end, it is the only kind of dignity that is left to us, to be brave and uncomplaining, and to write a good letter.”

“A home is a place where you can be yourself. It is a place where you can relax and feel comfortable.”

“I am not a feminist, but I am a woman who is not afraid to be a woman.”

“I think one of the things that is wrong with America is that it is a country that is in love with itself.”