“He was a weedy-looking young man with straw-coloured hair and rather long legs, who had failed twice for the Foreign Office. He sometimes wore tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles to correct a slight squint, and through influence he had recently got a job… — Anthony Powell Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“Like everything that's any good, it has about twenty different meanings.” — Anthony Powell Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
Parents. . . are sometimes a bit of a disappointment to their children. They don't fulfil the promise of their early years. — Anthony Powell Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“Enormous simplifications were possibly necessary to carry a deeper truth than lay on the surface of a mass of unsorted detail.” — Anthony Powell Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
Dinner at the Huntercombes possessed only two dramatic features: the wine was a farce and the food a tragedy — Anthony Powell Copy Share Image
