Anita Brookner Quotes

I had to be honest with myself and that I felt hatred then, but as children say "I hate you", it's not really hate, you know, it's anger.

I think, as you're growing up, your emotions are just as deep as they are when you're an adult. You're ability to feel lonely, longing, confused or angry are just as deep. We don't feel things more as we get older.

There is no child left within me, none whatsoever.

I've been trying to grow up some myself, in my heart, and it's happening quick and I feel good about it, and I want that to come out in the music.

When you're 16 or 17, I think like most people that age, the first time you experience certain things in life, whether it's heartbreak or death or love, obviously it's going to seem like a much bigger deal.

I know I should feel anger at my father for certain things. But since he died when I was 11, I never got to that point.

Boys do cry, but I don't think I shed a tear for a good chunk of my teenage years.

It's refreshing and weird when your kids get older and they're able to tell you how they feel and what they want.

Even as a boy, my dad always told me, 'Don't show emotion.' If I banged my cue, he would give me a row and say, 'Stop that.' Don't show any petulance. It was developed, certainly, but I think you have got to have it in you.

I have not wept since the death of my parents," said Luxa quietly. "But I am thought to be unnatural in this respect.

I look older. Maybe it's the short hair or maybe it's just that I wear all that has happened like a mask. Either way, I always thought I would be happy when I stopped looking like a child. But all I feel is a lump in my throat. I am no longer the daughter my parents knew. They will never know me as I am now.

Of course, I get angry. Of course, I get sad. I have a full range of emotions. I also have a whole smorgasbord of ways of dealing with my feelings. That is what we should give children. Give them ... ways to express their rage without hurting themselves or somebody else. That's what the world needs.

Children play earnestly as if it were work. But people grow up, and they work with a sorrow upon them. It's duty.

This passion, and the death of a dear friend, would go near to make a man look sad.

Grief is nature’s most powerful aphrodisiac.

Last night I wept. I wept because the process by which I have become woman was painful. I wept because I was no longer a child with a child's blind faith. I wept because my eyes were opened to reality....I wept because I could not believe anymore and I love to believe. I can still love passionately without believing. That means I love humanly. I wept because I have lost my pain and I am not yet accustomed to its absence.

When a child shuts down his painful emotional side, he also loses the ability to express his joyous side. Emotions are a whole. With anger comes the ability to express delight; with sadness comes the ability to express lightheartedness. This is the breadth of emotion that allows an adult to experience intimacy with a spouse, with God, and with his children

We all grow up with anger. It's part of the human condition. But what do you do with that? It seems obvious to me that you've got to use it for something, but you have to separate it from your ego.

Why does a man cry? he wondered. Not like a woman; not for that. Not for sentiment. A man cries over the loss of something, something alive. A man can cry over a sick animal that he knows won't make it. The death of a child: a man can cry for that. But not because things are sad. A man, he thought, cries not for the future or the past but for the present.

It is precisely because a child's feelings are so strong that they cannot be repressed without serious consequences. The stronger a prisoner is, the thicker the prison walls have to be, which impede or completely prevent later emotional growth.

I don’t have anger towards women. It’s the first script I wrote, I was really young. I got older. It’s told from an angry point-of-view. Young men are crazy strange emotional beings.

She is nine, beloved, as open-faced as the sky and as self-contained. I have watched her grow. As recently as three or four years ago, she had a young child's perfectly shallow receptiveness; she fitted into the world of time, it fitted into her, as thoughtlessly as sky fits its edges, or a river its banks. But as she has grown, her smile has widened with a touch of fear and her glance has taken on depth. Now she is aware of some of the losses you incur by being here--the extortionary rent you have to pay as long as you stay.

To avoid having bad things happen, learning to manage your anger and to actually share how you really feel about something, and get it behind you is one of the most important aspects of growing up.

Most men die many times in their lives. The man we become invariably slaughters the child we once were. His knowledge of the world murders the babe's innocence. from Time Untime by Sherrilyn Kenyon

Someone once said that under the bell jar of compliance, the only thing that blooms is rage.