“Good women always think it is their fault when someone else is being offensive. Bad women never take the blame for anything.”
― Anita Brookner, quote from Hotel du Lac
“My idea of absolute happiness is to sit in a hot garden all, reading, or writing, utterly safe in the knowledge that the person I love will come home to me in the evening. Every evening.'
'You are a romantic, Edith,' repeated Mr Neville, with a smile.
'It is you who are wrong,' she replied. 'I have been listening to that particular accusation for most of my life. I am not a romantic. I am a domestic animal. I do not sigh and yearn for extravagant displays of passion, for the grand affair, the world well lost for love. I know all that, and know that it leaves you lonely. No, what I crave is the simplicity of routine. An evening walk, arm in arm, in fine weather. A game of cards. Time for idle talk. Preparing a meal together.”
― Anita Brookner, quote from Hotel du Lac
“A woman owes it to herself to have pretty things. And if she feels good she looks good.
You are wrong if you think you cannot live without love.
I cannot live without it. I do not mean that I go into a decline, develop odd symptons, became a caricature. I mean that I cannot live well without it. I cannot think or act or speak or write or even dream with any kind of energy in the absence of love. I feel excluded from the living world. I become cold, fish-like, immobile. I implode. My idea of absolute happiness is to sit in a hot garden all day, reading or writing, utterly safe in the knowledge that the person I love will come home to me in the evening. Every evening. I am not a romantic. I am a domesticated animal. I do not sigh and yearn for extravagant displays of passion, for the grand affair, the world well lost for love. I know all that, and know that it leaves you lonely. No, what I crave is the simplicity of routine. An evening walk, arm in arm, in fine weather. A game of cards. Time for idle talk. Preparing a meal together.”
― Anita Brookner, quote from Hotel du Lac
“That sun, that light had faded, and she had faded with them. Now she was as grey as the season itself.”
― Anita Brookner, quote from Hotel du Lac
“ Siz bir romantiksiniz, Edith," diyerek sözünü yineledi Mr.Neville gülümseyerek.
"Yanılan sizsiniz," diye yanıtladı Edith. "Ömrüm boyunca bu suçlamayı dinledim durdum.Romantik değilim ben.Ben, evcil bir hayvanım. Ahlayıp ohlayıp taşkın tutku gösterilerinin, büyük aşkların özlemini çekmiyorum, aşk için dünyayı hepten gözden çıkarmıyorum. Bütün bunları biliyorum ve bunun insanı yapayalnız bıraktığını da biliyorum. Hayır, benim can attığım şey rutin yaşamın yalınlığı. Güzel bir havada kol kola bir akşam yürüyüşü.Bir iskambil oyunu. Gevezelik etmek. Bir yemeği birlikte hazırlamak”
― Anita Brookner, quote from Hotel du Lac
“As a devil's advocate Mr Neville was faultless. And yet, she knew, there was a flaw in his reasoning, just as there was a flaw in his ability to feel.”
― Anita Brookner, quote from Hotel du Lac
“You are wrong if you think you cannot live without love, Edith.'
'No, I am not,' she said, slowly. 'I cannot live without it. Oh, I do not mean that I go into a decline, develop odd symptoms, become a caricature. I mean something far more serious than that. I mean that I cannot live well without it. I cannot think or act or speak or write or even dream with any kind of energy in the absence of love. I feel excluded from the living world. I become cold, fish-like, immobile. I implode. My idea of absolute happiness is to sit in a hot garden all day, reading or writing, utterly safe in the knowledge that the person I love will come home to me in the evening. Every evening.'
'You are a romantic, Edith,' repeated Mr Neville, with a smile.
'It is you who are wrong,' she replied. 'I have been listening to that particular accusation for most of my life. I am not a romantic. I am a domestic animal. I do not sigh and yearn for extravagant displays of passion, for the grand affair, the world well lost for love. I know all that, and know that it leaves you lonely. No, what I crave is the simplicity of routine. An evening walk, arm in arm, in fine weather. A game of cards. Time for idle talk. Preparing a meal together.”
― Anita Brookner, quote from Hotel du Lac
“Fiction, the time-honoured resource of the ill-at-ease, would have to come to her aid,”
― Anita Brookner, quote from Hotel du Lac
“Kavgalar tatlıya bağlanabilir, ama başkalarını mahcup düşürenler asla tümüyle unutulamaz.”
― Anita Brookner, quote from Hotel du Lac
“You have no idea how promising the world begins to looks once you have decided to have it all for yourself. And how much healthier your decisions are once they become entirely selfish. It is the simplest thing in the world to decide what you want to do - or, rather, what you don't want to do - and just to act on that.”
― Anita Brookner, quote from Hotel du Lac
“They sat islanded in their foreignness, irrelevant now that the holiday season had ended, anachronistic, outstaying their welcome, no longer necessary to anyone's plans. Priorities had shifted; the little town was settling down for its long uninterrupted hibernation. No one came here in the winter. The weather was too bleak, the snow too distant, the amenities too sparse to tempt visitors. And they felt that the backs of the residents had been turned on them with a sigh of relief, reminding them of their transitory nature, their fundamental unreality. And when Monica at last succeeded in ordering coffee, they still sat, glumly, for another ten minutes, before the busy waitress remembered their order.
'Homesick,' said Edith finally. 'Yes.' But she thought of her little house as if it had existed in another life, another dimension. She thought of it as something to which she might never return. The seasons had changed since she last saw it; she was no longer the person who could sit up in bed in the early morning and let the sun warm her shoulders and the light make her impatient for the day to begin. That sun, that light had faded, and she had faded with them. Now she was as grey as the season itself. She bent her head over her coffee, trying to believe that it was the steam rising from the cup that was making her eyes prick. This cannot go on, she thought.”
― Anita Brookner, quote from Hotel du Lac
“She hates and fears her husband, but only because he has not protected her, and she sees herself condemned to loneliness and exile. In this she is prescient. I see her, some years hence, a remittance woman, paid to live abroad, in such an hotel, in various Hotels du Lac, her beautiful face grown gaunt and scornful, her dog permanently under her arm. Her last weapon will be an unyielding snobbishness, which is already in evidence.”
― Anita Brookner, quote from Hotel du Lac
“Edith, in her veal-coloured room in the Hotel du Lac, sat with her hands in her lap, wondering what she was doing there. And then remembered, and trembled. And thought with shame of her small injustices, of her unworthy thoughts towards those excellent women who had befriended her, and to whom she had revealed nothing. I have been too harsh on women, she thought, because I understand them better than I understand men. I know their watchfulness, their patience, their need to advertise themselves as successful. Their need never to admit to a failure. I know all that because I am one of them. I am harsh because I remember Mother and her unkindness, and because I am continually on the alert for more. But women are not all like Mother, and it is really stupid of me to imagine that they are. Edith, Father would have said, think a little. You have made a false equation.”
― Anita Brookner, quote from Hotel du Lac
“My idea of absolute happiness is to sit in a hot garden all day, reading, or writing, utterly safe in the knowledge that the person I love will come home to me in the evening. Every evening.”
― Anita Brookner, quote from Hotel du Lac
“Biliyor musunuz," dedi Edith, on dakika süren sessiz inişten sonra, "Şu gülümsemenizi birazcık sevimsiz buluyorum."
Mr. Neville'in gülümsemesi yüzüne daha da yayıldı. "Beni daha iyi tanıdığınızda," dedi, "Gülümseyişimin gerçekte ne kadar sevimsiz olduğunu anlayacaksınız.”
― Anita Brookner, quote from Hotel du Lac
Anita Brookner
Born place: in Herne Hill, England, The United Kingdom
Born date July 16, 1928
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