Hotel du Lac Quotes

“Good women always think it is their fault when someone else is being offensive. Bad women never take the blame for anything.”
― Anita Brookner, 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, 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, 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, Hotel du Lac

“Fiction, the time-honoured resource of the ill-at-ease, would have to come to her aid,”
― Anita Brookner, 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, 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, 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, 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, Hotel du Lac

“Aesop was writing for the tortoise market. Axiomatically, hares have no time to read. They are too busy winning the game. The propaganda goes all the other way, but only because it is the tortoise who is in need of consolation. Like the meek who are going to inherit the earth.”
― Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac

“Now what?' asked Mr Neville, taking her arm.
'Oh, nothing,' said Edith. 'I was simply thinking how little vice there is around these days. One is led to believe one can pick and choose, but in fact, there seems no choice at all.'
'Stroll round the deck with me,' said Mr Neville. 'You are shivering. That cardigan is not warm enough; I do wish you would get rid of it. ... As to vice, there is plenty to be found if you know where to look.'
'I never seem to find it,' said Edith.
'That is because you do not give yourself over wholeheartedly to the pursuit. But, if you remember, we are going to change all that.'
'I really don't see how. If all it involves is giving away my cardigan, I feel I should tell you I have another one at home.”
― Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac

“You have no idea how promising the world begins to look 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, Hotel Du Lac

“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.”
― Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac

“People feel at home with low moral standards. It is scruples that put them off.”
― Anita Brookner, 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, Hotel du Lac

“It is not true that Satan makes work for idle hands to do; that is just what he doesn't. Satan should be at hand with all manner of glittering distractions, false but irresistible promises, inducements to reprehensible behaviour. Instead of which one is simply offered a choice between overwork and half-hearted idleness.”
― Anita Brookner, 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, Hotel du Lac

“Kavgalar tatlıya bağlanabilir, ama başkalarını mahcup düşürenler asla tümüyle unutulamaz.”
― Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac

“I hate you,' she shouted, hopefully.
A steady crunch of gravel announced the reappearance of Mr Neville. When his face came into focus, Edith saw that it was wearing its usual smile, intensified.
'You are coming along very well,' he said, taking her arm.
'You know,' she said, after ten minutes of silent descent. 'I find that smile of yours just the faintest bit unamiable.'
His smile broadened. 'When you get to know me better,' he remarked, 'you will realize just how unamiable it really is.”
― Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac

“For that is how he saw me, she thought, and out of love for him that is how I tried to be.”
― Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac

“The weather was still fine, but waning in conviction, as if its hold on heat and light were growing weaker.”
― Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac

“When she awoke, rather later than usual, it was with the ancient and deadly foreknowledge that the day would be a write-off. ... Depression hovered and must be forestalled. Writing was out of the question. Take things very quietly, she counselled herself: do not think. Close doors.”
― Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac

“She leaned back in her chair and raised her face to the sun, mildly intoxicated, not so much by the wine as by the scope of this important argument. Seduced, also, by the possibility that she might please herself, simply by wishing it so. As a devil's advocate, he was flawless. And yet, she knew, there was a flaw in his reasoning, just as there was a flaw in his ability to feel.”
― Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac

“I should like some coffee,' she announced, with what she hoped was Nietschean directness. 'No, on second thoughts, I should like some tea. I should like a very strong pot of tea.”
― Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac

“You are sadistic,' she said, pleasantly.”
― Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac

“No, she was not in a hurry. And when the tall woman linked arms with her, she found herself touched and warmed by the contact, and, with the little dog bustling ahead through the leaves, they wandered slowly and silently along under the damp trees, aware of an impatient but genuine good will towards each other, just enough to sustain them against the onslaught of more painful memories that came to them unbidden and uncensored.
Women share their sadness, thought Edith. Their joy they like to show off to one another. Victory, triumph over the odds, calls for an audience. And that air of bustle and exigence sometimes affected by the sexually loquacious - that is for the benefit of other women. No solidarity then.”
― Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac

“He had smiled, but his eyes were full of sad knowledge. He had known that nothing would be the same for him again, that his stay in the hospital was not to be the brief interlude he had bracingly told her mother it would be. And he had not come home. And maybe I should not go home, she thought, her heart breaking with sorrow. And beneath the sorrow she felt vividly unsafe, as she did when she saw that the plot of a novel would finally resolve itself, and how this might be brought about.”
― Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac

“I am not after Mr Neville or his money. I earn my own money. Money is what you earn when you grow up.”
― Anita Brookner, 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, Hotel du Lac

“And anyway, if she's all that liberated, why doesn't she go down to the bar and pick someone up? I'm sure it's entirely possible. It's just that most women don't do it. And why don't they do it?' she asked, with a sudden return of assurance. 'It's because they prefer the old myths, when it comes to the crunch. They want to believe that they are going to be discovered, looking their best, behind closed doors, just when they thought that all was lost, by a man who has battled across continents, abandoning whatever he may have had in his in-tray, to reclaim them. Ah! If only it were true,' she said, breathing hard, and spearing a slice of kiwi fruit which remained suspended on her fork as she bent her head and thought this one out.”
― Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac