Anthony Powell Quotes

“Books do furnish a room.”

“I get a warm feeling among my books.”

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

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

“Self-love seems so often unrequited.”

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

“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.”

“People think because a novel's invented, it isn't true. Exactly the reverse is the case. Because a novel's invented, it is true. Biography and memoirs can never be wholly true, since they can't include every conceivable circumstance of what happened. The novel can do that. The novelist himself lays it down. His decision is binding.”

“He fell in love with himself at first sight and it is a passion to which he has always remained faithful.”