“To those familiar with the rhythm of living there are few surprises in this world.” — Anthony Powell Copy Share Image
“In the end most things in life—perhaps all things—turn out to be appropriate.” — Anthony Powell Copy Share Image
“My father will be filled with frank astonishment that I should be proving myself capable of earning a living in any capacity… — Anthony Powell Copy Share Image
“Most people's sex life is a mystery, especially that of individuals who seem to make most parade of it. Such is the… — 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… — Anthony Powell Copy Share Image
“That illusion—as such a point of view was, in due course, to appear—was closely related to another belief: that existence fans out… — Anthony Powell Copy Share Image
“Life becomes more and more like an examination where you have to guess the questions as well as the answers. I'd long… — Anthony Powell Copy Share Image
“It was realisation, in a moment of time, not only of her own possibilities, far from inconsiderable ones, but also of other… — Anthony Powell Copy Share Image
“Simple-lifers, Utopian socialists, spiritualists, occultists, theosophists, quietists, pacifists, futurists, cubists, zealots of all sorts in their approach to life and art, later… — Anthony Powell Copy Share Image
“For some reason, the sight of snow descending on fire always makes me think of the ancient world—legionaries in sheepskin warming themselves… — Anthony Powell Copy Share Image
Self-pity is essentially humorless, devoid of that lightness of touch which gives understanding of life. — Anthony Powell Copy Share Image
“The latter's boast that he had never read a book for pleasure in his life did not predispose me in his favour.” — Anthony Powell Copy Share Image
One of the worst things about life is not how nasty the nasty people are. You know that already. It is how… — Anthony Powell Copy Share Image
Literature illuminates life only for those to whom books are a necessity. — Anthony Powell Copy Share Image
“At that stage of life all sorts of things were going on round about that only later took on any meaning or… — Anthony Powell Copy Share Image
“An exceedingly well-informed report,' said the General. 'You have given yourself the trouble to go into matters thoroughly, I see. That is… — Anthony Powell Copy Share Image
“The General, speaking one felt with authority, always insisted that, if you bring off adequate preservation of your personal myth, nothing much… — Anthony Powell Copy Share Image
“Later in life, I learnt that many things one may require have to be weighed against one’s dignity, which can be an… — Anthony Powell Copy Share Image
On the stage . . . masks are assumed with some regard to procedure; in everyday life, the participants act their parts… — Anthony Powell Copy Share Image
“It was clear he had remained unflustered by recent public events, at the age he had reached perhaps disillusioned with the commonplaces… — Anthony Powell Copy Share Image
For reasons not always at the time explicable, there are specific occasions when events begin suddenly to take on a significance previously… — Anthony Powell Copy Share Image
“Later in life, I learnt that many things one may require have to be weighed against one's dignity, which can be an… — Anthony Powell Copy Share Image
“At the same time, a faint sense of disappointment superimposed on an otherwise absorbing inner experience was in its way suitably Proustian… — Anthony Powell Copy Share Image
“He gave me a look of great contempt; as I supposed, for venturing, even by implication, to draw a parallel between a… — Anthony Powell Copy Share Image
“I used to imagine life divided into separate compartments, consisting, for example, of such dual abstractions as pleasure and pain, love and… — Anthony Powell Copy Share Image
“For some reason, the sight of snow descending on fire always makes me think of the ancient world – legionaries in sheepskin… — 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
