Anthony Powell Quotes

Reading novels needs almost as much talent as writing them.

Self-love seems so often unrequited.

She scarcely spoke at all and might have been one of those huge dolls which, when inclined backwards...

Literature illuminates life only for those to whom books are a necessity.

Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you have not committed.

Writing is a combination of intangible creative fantasy and appallingly hard work.

One hears about life all the time from different people with very different narrative gifts.

Parents are sometimes a bit of a disappointment to their children. They don't fulfill the promise of...

Feeling unable to maintain this detachment of attitude towards human- and, in especial, matrimonial-...

There is always a real and an imaginary person you are in love with; sometimes you love one best, so...

When people really hate one another, the tension within them can sometimes make itself felt througho...

I was impressed for the ten thousandth time by the fact that literature illuminates life only for th...

The potential biographies of those who die young possess the mystic dignity of a headless statue, th...

An exceedingly well-informed report,' said the General. 'You have given yourself the trouble to go i...

One passes through the world knowing few, if any, of the important things about even the people with...

...in those days children were rather out of fashion.

It was [Hugh's] omnipresent fear that some woman might be foisted on him who would turn out to be an...

He [Widmerpool] moistened his lips, though scarcely perceptibly. I thought his mixture of secretiven...

In the break-up of a marriage the world inclines to take the side of the partner with most vitality,...

Later in life, I learnt that many things one may require have to be weighed against one's dignity, w...

Anyway, what can one do here? I am seriously thinking of running away and joining the Foreign Legion...

There is a strong disposition in youth, from which some individuals never escape, to suppose that ev...

Slowly, but very deliberately, the brooding edifice of seduction, creaking and incongruous, came int...

Some of the best of us are quite unambitious.

Speaking about time’s relentless passage, Powell’s narrator compares certain stages of experience to...

Daydreams of wealth or women must have given Carolo that faraway look which never left him; sad and ...

Barnby always dismissed the idea of intelligence in a woman as no more than a characteristic to be e...

What a shabby lot of highbrows have turned out tonight," he said, when he saw us. "It makes me asham...

Women may show some discrimination about whom they sleep with, but they'll marry anybody.

Only an atmosphere of quiet hard work and dull, serious conversation were appropriate to him.

Esteem for the army - never in this country regarded, in the continental manner, as a popular expres...

That was a good straightforward point of view, no pretence that games were anything but an outlet fo...

Entering the front door, you were at once assailed by a nightmare of cheerlessness and squalor, all ...

In the seven years or so that had passed since I had last seen him, Sir Magnus Donners had grown not...

In fact, she [Pamela Flitton] seemed to prefer 'older men' on the whole, possibly because of their p...

Bring a torch, if you've got one. It's as dark as hell and stinks of something far worse than cheese...

One’s capacity for hearing about ghastly doings lessens with age.

For some reason Canon Fenneau made me feel a little uneasy. His voice might be soft, it was also coe...

In any case the friendships of later life, in contrast wih those negotiated before thirty, are apt t...

For some reason, the sight of snow descending on fire always makes me think of the ancient world – l...

   Susan poured herself out some more wine. She said:   "You're nice. You must come and see me some ...

Trapnel wanted, among other things, to be a writer, a dandy, a lover, a comrade, an eccentric, a sag...

There is, after all, no pleasure like that given by a woman who really wants to see you.

Books do furnish a room.