Brookner Novel Quotes & Sayings

It was a movie [The Railway Man] that stayed with me a long time. It's still one of the things I'm most proud of. I got to know the man that I was playing and unfortunately he passed away just before the movie came out. It's one that meant a huge amount to me, and one that I'm particularly proud of. — Jeremy Irvine

If you don't do it, it won't get done! — Rick Murcer

Holy shit. I'm a Smurf. — Erica Cameron

There are three signs of a hypocrite: when he speaks he speaks lies, when he makes a promise he breaks it, and when he is trusted he betrays his trust. — Elijah Muhammad

To remain pure, a novel has to cast a moral puzzle. Anything else is mere negotiation. — Anita Brookner

Sleep is a very capricious goddess, and it is precisely when she is invoked that she delays coming.
- Page 184 — Alexandre Dumas

Hotel Du Lac
Edith, once again anonymous, and accepting her anonymity, made an appropriately inconspicuous exit. And, sitting in the deserted salon, the first to arrive from the dining room, she felt her precarious dignity hard-pressed and about to succumb in the light of her earlier sadness. The pianist, sitting down to play, gave her a brief nod. She nodded back, and thought how limited her means of expression had become: nodding to the pianist or to Mme de Bonneuil, listening to Mrs Pusey, using a disguised voice in the novel she was writing and, with all of this, waiting for a voice that remained silent, hearing very little that meant anything to her at all. The dread implications of this condition made her blink her eyes and vow to be brave, to do better, not to give way. But it was not easy. — Anita Brookner