
Undue Influence

I had not wanted this. I had invited Martin for a meal, only to be told that, on the contrary, I must dine with him. I did not want to ‘dine’; to me the meal was, or should have been, a preliminary, and this one seemed scheduled to last rather a long time.
Anita Brookner • Undue Influence
In the shop my appearance had hardly mattered. In any case book buyers are usually short-sighted. Now I compared myself with those elegant women, or perhaps one elegant woman, in Italy, and felt ashamed. And I had hoped to make an impression simply by being myself! I dispatched naïveté for ever, consigning it to a prelapsarian time before doubt had
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It must be a terrible thing to die alone, an even worse one to know that you will have to do so. Soldiers in battle have each other, but who will provide comfort in the stretches of the night for one who has had to make a virtue of self-sufficiency? Wiggy and I were entirely preoccupied with this matter. And Eileen had been the acme of common sense
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This evening was a palpable failure. Anyone could see that. Anyone but Martin, that is. An unlimited opportunity to talk was making him reckless, that and the surprise of being remembered by friends from a former life. He looked years younger, altogether impressive. A woman at the next table stole a glance at him, but fortunately he did not notice.
Anita Brookner • Undue Influence
She is old, I thought with a tremor, but it was impossible to feel pity. Pity is for the weak, the incompetent, the unsuccessful: Muriel was none of these things.
Anita Brookner • Undue Influence
I did not particularly want to be involved in a parade of sentimentality. In any event I am allergic to weddings, having attended too many. But Wiggy is a nicer person, more generous, less judgmental.
Anita Brookner • Undue Influence
I also knew that an unsatisfactory or unfinished love affair can banish normality for some time, and that it was incumbent on me not to indulge in speculation but to dismiss the whole episode as one of those aberrations that unfortunately afflict one from time to time and for which one is hardly responsible, since the gods, or the fates, or the
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It is my conviction that everyone is profoundly eccentric. Those people I pass on my way to work every morning almost certainly harbour unimaginable fantasies.
Anita Brookner • Undue Influence
Besides, I like French cathedrals, although not perhaps the flashier ones. Vienne and Autun are more to my taste than Troyes, although Troyes has a lot going for it. Le Mans was the only dead end: Dijon came close. Coutances was pleasant.