Brief Lives Quotes

“The difficulty, as I saw it, was that she was trying to manage a public self whereas she was by nature a miniaturist who excelled at drawing into her field of activity nuances, intimations, unspoken thought, the most tenuous of personal statements. She was better at the glancing criticism than at spontaneous magnanimity”
― Anita Brookner, Brief Lives

“Old times, sad times. I feel better about them now than I did then.”
― Anita Brookner, Brief Lives

“I reminded myself of someone, but someone I had not seen for a long time.”
― Anita Brookner, Brief Lives

“Owen had come along and I had fallen in love with him. I had not known then that it is not necessary to marry every man one loves. I know it now. Now I realize that it is marriage which is the great temptation for a woman, and that one can, and perhaps should, resist”
― Anita Brookner, Brief Lives

“She was fifty, a difficult age for letting go, still young enough to have ambitions and desires but with fewer opportunities of satisfying either.”
― Anita Brookner, Brief Lives

“My mistake was to lie in his arms moist-eyed with tenderness and gratitude, when the correct stance would have been a certain detachment, an irony, as if to imply that he would have to love me to a much higher standard to convince me that I had to take him seriously. I should have found such a tactic odious, but now I see that it is sometimes necessary to meet withdrawal with withdrawal, dismissal with dismissal.”
― Anita Brookner, Brief Lives

“I remember at that time I went to the hairdresser's. I did this regularly, but I remember that visit for two particular reasons. The first was that next to me was a young mother with a little girl aged about three. The child, whose hair was about to be cut for the first time, screamed with terror and clung to her mother. The hairdresser stood by gravely, comb in hand: he recognised that this was a serious moment. The mother, blushing, tried to comfort the child who had suddenly plunged into despair; all around the shop women smiled in sympathy. What impressed me, and what I particularly remember, was the child's passionate attempt to re-enter her mother, the arms locked around the woman's neck, the terrified cries of unending love. So dangerous is it to be so close! I had tears in my eyes, witnessing that bond, seeing that closeness, of which only a sorrowful memory remained in my own life. One loses the capacity to grieve as a child grieves, or to rage as a child rages: hotly, despairingly, with tears of passion. One grows up, one becomes civilised, one learns one's manners, and consequently can no longer manage these two functions - sorrow and anger - adequately.”
― Anita Brookner, Brief Lives

“Fortunately, common sense asserted itself and I vowed that I should never wait for anyone again.”
― Anita Brookner, Brief Lives