Anthony Powell
16 quotes
Biography
"I get a warm feeling among my books."
"Books do furnish a room."
"An exceedingly well-informed report,' said the General. 'You have given yourself the trouble to go into matters thoroughly, I see. That is one of the secrets of success in life."
"The whole idea of interviews is in itself absurd – one cannot answer deep questions about what one's life was like – one writes novels about it."
"Parents – especially step-parents – are sometimes a bit of a disappointment to their children. They don't fufill the promise of their early years."
"He fell in love with himself at first sight and it is a passion to which he has always remained faithful."
"Self-love seems so often unrequited."
"[T]here is no greater sign of innate misery than a love of teasing."
"Growing old's like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven't committed."
"People think because a novel's invented, it isn't true. Exactly the reverse is the case. Because a novel's invented, it is true. Biography and memoirs can never be wholly true, since they can't include every conceivable circumstance of what happened. The novel can do that. The novelist himself lays it down. His decision is binding."
"Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you have not committed."
"Literature illuminates life only for those to whom books are a necessity."
"She scarcely spoke at all and might have been one of those huge dolls which, when inclined backwards, say "Ma-ma" or "Pa-pa": though impossible to imagine in any position so undignified as that required for the mechanism to produce these syllables."
"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 their early years."