We were now in the midst of dangerous abstractions which…

I was impressed for the ten thousandth time by the fact that literature illuminates life only for those to whom books are a necessity.…

— Anthony Powell

“Like everything that's any good, it has about twenty different meanings.”

— Anthony Powell

“I have absolutely no histrionic talent, none at all, a constitutional handicap in almost all undertakings of life;but then, after all, plenty of actors…

— Anthony Powell

“The crematorium was a blaze of sunshine.”

— Anthony Powell

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

— Anthony Powell

“Her expression was oafish, but it was on the whole this quality that gave her face a certain retentive efficacy. She had the look…

— Anthony Powell

“Enormous simplifications were possibly necessary to carry a deeper truth than lay on the surface of a mass of unsorted detail.”

— Anthony Powell

“I hate anything superficial. But I will take the book and look at it, and tell you what I think of the writing.”

— Anthony Powell

“It is rather an occasion, darling,’ said Moreland, vexed at these objections. ‘After all, I am noted among composers for the smallness of my…

— Anthony Powell

“There seemed no particular object in avoiding banality from the start, as the evening showed every sign of developing into a banal one.”

— Anthony Powell

Dinner at the Huntercombes possessed only two dramatic features: the wine was a farce and the food a tragedy

— Anthony Powell

“Even then I did not recognise the quest for power.”

— Anthony Powell

“Some of the best of us are quite unambitious.”

— Anthony Powell

One passes through the world knowing few, if any, of the important things about even the people with whom one has been from time…

— Anthony Powell

“He stood pondering this flat, forthright declaration of anti-simianism on Miss Weedon’s part. The notion that some people might not like monkeys was evidently…

— Anthony Powell