“I used to imagine life divided into separate compartments, consisting, for example, of such dual abstractions as pleasure and pain, love and hate, friendship and enmity; and more material classifications like work and play: a profession or calling being, according… — 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 of life; too keen a theatre-goer to spare time for any but the columns of dramatic criticism, however… — 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
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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
