Falling Slowly QUOTES

1 " This was somehow a day on which concentration would not be possible, a day on which words must give way to images "

― Anita Brookner , Falling Slowly

3 " What she loved about Simon was his pleasure, his natural effervescence. After a life of minimal satisfactions she discovered, marvelling, that it was possible to be confident, expectant, at ease. Or rather that it was possible for Simon to be all of these things. If one is unaware of fatality it is possible to delight in happy accidents. That was her status, and it suited him perfectly. She supposed that she was an ideal mistress, tactfully present, just as tactfully absent; she also knew that the condition of a mistress was somehow subject to deterioration, that there came a time when reproaches would be aired, or an unseemly curiosity would surface. "

― Anita Brookner , Falling Slowly

5 " She saw that these two people, who had never met, held the keys to her own life, were her completion, her fulfilment, whereas more ephemeral characters, such as Simon Haggard, were simply made of inferior material. Once he had passed her in a car; at least she had seen a hand waving and had identified it as belonging to him. The only surprise was that she felt no curiosity about him. His physical splendour was no longer a memory; it was as if he had become a dead star, a random fragment of astronomical matter, beyond usefulness. Naked, as he always was in her memory, he had less physical presence than Tom in his pale suit, as if his nakedness had been inopportune, ill considered. Yet she had loved the one, not quite loved the other. Both partings had been unnatural, yet no one was entirely to blame. She saw now that shame and guilt were otiose; only regret was permissible. And defensible. Miriam saw that she too deserved regret for the manner in which she had been forsaken. One’s life is not always in one’s own hands. That is why it is so convenient to blame outside forces. But in fact one’s secret self makes certain choices, rejects others. This is a matter for reflection, not for self-castigation. But it is apparently easy to explain to others: ‘That was where I went wrong. That was where I made my mistake.’ It was in fact more sensible to contemplate destiny. "

― Anita Brookner , Falling Slowly

7 " In the books she favoured, but wistfully, women were unmasked, laid bare by a man who finally understood them. She knew that this was rubbish, but found the illusion so beguiling that she continued to embrace it as her own, did not realize, or perhaps failed fully to realize, that other women, even, perhaps, the women who wrote the novels, cherished the same illusion. "

― Anita Brookner , Falling Slowly