Anthony Powell Quotes

• Writing is a combination of intangible creative fantasy and appallingly hard work.

  Anthony Powell

  Hard Work, Writing, Creative

  47 Copy quote

• I get a warm feeling among my books.

  Anthony Powell

  Book, Feelings, Warm

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• Literature illuminates life only for those to whom books are a necessity.

  Anthony Powell

  Book, Literature

  Anthony Powell (2010). “The Valley of Bones: Book 7 of A Dance to the Music of Time”, p.221, University of Chicago Press

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• One of the worst things about life is not how nasty the nasty people are. You know that already. It is how nasty the nice people can be.

  Anthony Powell

  Nice, People, Nasty

  1975 Hearing Secret Harmonies, ch.7.

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• It is not what happens to people that is significant, but what they think happens to them.

  Anthony Powell

  Thinking, People, Significant

  Anthony Powell (2010). “Books Do Furnish a Room: Book 10 of A Dance to the Music of Time”, p.141, University of Chicago Press

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• I was impressed for the ten thousandth time by the fact that literature illuminates life only for those to whom books are a necessity. Books are unconvertible assets, to be passed on only to those who possess them already.

  Anthony Powell

  Book, Facts, Literature

  Anthony Powell (2010). “The Valley of Bones: Book 7 of A Dance to the Music of Time”, p.221, University of Chicago Press

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• For reasons not always at the time explicable, there are specific occasions when events begin suddenly to take on a significance previously unsuspected, so that, before we really know where we are, life seems to have begun in earnest at last, and we ourselves, scarcely aware that any change has taken place, are careering uncontrollably down the slippery avenues of eternity.

  Anthony Powell

  Taken, Lasts, Events

  Anthony Powell (1995). “A Dance to the Music of Time: First Movement”, p.274, University of Chicago Press

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• People think that because a novel's invented, it isn't true. Exactly the reverse is the case. Biography and memoirs can never be wholly true, since they cannot include every conceivable circumstance of what happened. The novel can do that.

  Anthony Powell

  Thinking, People, Biographies

  Anthony Powell (2010). “Hearing Secret Harmonies: Book 12 of A Dance to the Music of Time”, p.84, University of Chicago Press

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

  Anthony Powell

  Children, Disappointment, Years

  Anthony Powell (1995). “A Dance to the Music of Time: First Movement”, University of Chicago Press

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• One passes through the world knowing few, if any, of the important things about even the people with whom one has been from time to time in the closest intimacy.

  Anthony Powell

  Knowing, People, Important

  Anthony Powell (1995). “A Dance to the Music of Time: Second Movement”, University of Chicago Press

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• He fell in love with himself at first sight and it is a passion to which he has always remained faithful. Selflove seems so often unrequited.

  Anthony Powell

  Love, Faith, Passion

  'The Acceptance World' (1955) ch. 1

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• There is, after all, no pleasure like that given by a woman who really wants to see you.

  Anthony Powell

  Want, Pleasure, Given

  Anthony Powell (2010). “The Acceptance World: Book 3 of A Dance to the Music of Time”, p.130, University of Chicago Press

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• When people really hate one another, the tension within them can sometimes make itself felt throughout a room, like atmospheric waves, first hot, then cold, wafted backwards and forwards as if in an invisible process of air conditioning, creating a pervasive physical disturbance.

  Anthony Powell

  Hate, Air, Creating

  Anthony Powell (1995). “A Dance to the Music of Time: Third Movement”, p.161, University of Chicago Press

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• 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.

  Anthony Powell

  Writing, Ideas, Answers

  The Times, May 15, 1986.

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• Books do furnish a room.

  Anthony Powell

  Book, Reading, Rooms

  Title of novel (1971)

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• On the stage . . . masks are assumed with some regard to procedure; in everyday life, the participants act their parts without consideration either for suitability of scene or for the words spoken by the rest of the cast: the result is a general tendency for things to be brought to the level of farce even when the theme is serious enough.

  Anthony Powell

  Life, Everyday, Farce

  Anthony Powell (2010). “A Question of Upbringing: Book 1 of A Dance to the Music of Time”, p.51, University of Chicago Press

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• Writing is above all a question of instinct.

  Anthony Powell

  Writing, Instinct

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• Self-pity is essentially humorless, devoid of that lightness of touch which gives understanding of life.

  Anthony Powell

  Self, Giving, Understanding

  8 Copy quote

• Dinner at the Huntercombes' possessed only two dramatic features - the wine was a farce and the food a tragedy.

  Anthony Powell

  Food, Wine, Two

  'The Acceptance World' (1955) ch. 4

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• Slowly, but very deliberately, the brooding edifice of seduction, creaking and incongruous, came into being, a vast Heath Robinson mechanism, dually controlled by them and lumbering gloomily down vistas of triteness. With a sort of heavy-fisted dexterity the mutually adapted emotions of each of them became synchronized, until the unavoidable anti-climax was at hand.

  Anthony Powell

  Hands, Dexterity, Emotion

  Anthony Powell (2014). “Afternoon Men: A Novel”, p.83, University of Chicago Press

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• You have to be a product of the product.

  Anthony Powell

  Products

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• A dance to the music of time.

  Anthony Powell

  Time

  Title of novel sequence (1951-75), after 'Le 4 stagioni che ballano al suono del tempo', the title given by Giovanni Pietro Bellori to a painting by Nicolas Poussin.

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• [T]here is no greater sign of innate misery than a love of teasing.

  Anthony Powell

  Misery, Tease, Innate

  Anthony Powell (1995). “A Dance to the Music of Time: Second Movement”, p.32, University of Chicago Press

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• Few persons who have ever sat for a portrait can have felt anything but inferior while the process is going on.

  Anthony Powell

  Portraits, Process, Sat

  Anthony Powell (2005). “Some Poets, Artists & 'A Reference for Mellors'”, p.251, Timewell Press

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• He gave me a look of great contempt; as I supposed, for venturing, even by implication, to draw a parallel between a lack of affluence that might, literally, affect my purchase of rare vintages, and a figure of speech intended delicately to convey his own dire want for the bare necessities of life. He remained silent for several seconds, as if trying to make up his mind whether he could ever bring himself to speak to me again; and then said gruffly: 'I've got to go now.'

  Anthony Powell

  Delicate Life, Vintage, Mind

  Anthony Powell (2010). “A Question of Upbringing: Book 1 of A Dance to the Music of Time”, p.188, University of Chicago Press

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