Life... is not simply a series of exciting new ventures. The future is not always a whole new ball game. There tends to be unfinished business. One trails all sorts of things around with one, things that simply won't be got rid of.

Anita Brookner CBE (born 16 July 1928) is an English language novelist and art historian who was born in Herne Hill a suburb of London. Brookner has not married; and took care of her parents as they aged. Anita Brookner had a lonely childhood although her grandmother and uncle lived with the family and her parents secular Jews opened their house to Jewish refugees escaping Nazi persecution during the 1930s and World War II.