Quotes by Anthony Powell

About Anthony Powell:

Anthony Dymoke Powell was an English novelist best known for his twelve-volume work A Dance to the Music of Time, published between 1951 and 1975.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Well,' said Mrs. Erdleigh, speaking kindly, as if to a child who has proposed a game inevitably associated with the breakage of china, 'I trouble will come of it if we do.

Anthony Powell

Later in life, I learnt that many things one may require have to be weighed against one's dignity, which can be an insuperable barrier against advancement in almost any direction. However, in those days, choice between dignity and unsatisfied curiosi...

Anthony Powell

Speaking about time’s relentless passage, Powell’s narrator compares certain stages of experience to the game of Russian Billiards as once he used to play it with a long vanished girlfriend. A game in which, he says, “...at the termination of a...

Anthony Powell

Books do furnish a room.

Anthony Powell

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

Anthony Powell

Feeling unable to maintain this detachment of attitude towards human- and, in especial, matrimonial- affairs, I asked whether it was not true that she had married Bob Duport. She nodded; not exactly conveying, it seemed to me, that by some happy chan...

Anthony Powell

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 dexte...

Anthony Powell

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 p...

Anthony Powell

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

It was [Hugh's] omnipresent fear that some woman might be foisted on him who would turn out to be an adventuress and would blackmail him. This preoccupation made it almost impossible for him to engage a secretary.

Anthony Powell

I was finally beginning to perceive that no matter how many dead people I might see, or people at the instant of their death, I would never manage to grasp death, that very moment, precisely in itself. It was one thing or the other: either you are de...

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 to time in the closest intimacy.

Anthony Powell

An exceedingly well-informed report,' said the General. 'You have given yourself the trouble to go into matters thoroughly, I see. That is one of the secrets of success in life.

Anthony Powell

If you were born in a country or at a time not only when nobody comes to kill your wife and your children, but also nobody comes to ask you to kill the wives and children of others, then render thanks to God and go in peace. But always keep this thou...

Anthony Powell

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

Anthony Powell

Parents - especially step-parents - are sometimes a bit of a disappointment to their children. They don't fulfill the promise of their early years.

Anthony Powell

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

Anthony Powell

Self-love seems so often unrequited.

Anthony Powell

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

Anthony Powell

Growing old's like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven't committed.

Anthony Powell

Author Bio

  • NameAnthony Powell
  • DescriptionEnglish novelist
  • BornDecember 21, 1905
  • DiedMarch 28, 2000
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionWriter; Novelist
  • WorksA Dance To The Music Of Time
  • AwardsCommander Of The Order Of The British Empire; James Tait Black Memorial Prize