Anita Brookner

If I were happy, married with six children, I wouldn't be writing. And I doubt if I should want to.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Great writers are the saints for the godless.

Like many rich men, he thought in anecdotes; like many simple women, she thought in terms of biography.

All good fortune is a gift of the gods, and you don't win the favor of the ancient gods by being good, but by being bold.

I've never got on very well with Jane Austen.

Good women always think it is their fault when someone else is being offensive. Bad women never take the blame for anything.

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.

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.

Existentialism is about being a saint without God; being your own hero, without all the sanction and support of religion or society.

Writing novels preserves you in a state of innocence - a lot passes you by - simply because your attention is otherwise diverted.

A complete woman is probably not a very admirable creature. She is manipulative, uses other people to get her own way, and works within whatever system she is in.

Old men should have more care to end life well than to live long.

Life... is not simply a series of exciting new ventures. The future is not always a whole new ball game. There tends to be unfinished business. One trails all sorts of things around with one, things that simply won't be got rid of.

It is my contention that Aesop was writing for the tortoise market. hares have no time to read.