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Anthony Powell Biography

Anthony Dymoke Powell CH CBE (/ˈpoʊəl/ POH-əl; 21 December 1905 – 28 March 2000) was an English novelist best known for his twelve-volume work A Dance to the Music of Time, published between 1951 and 1975.

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Anthony Powell Quotes

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

Food, Huntercombes, Tragedy, Two, Wine

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.

Faith, Faithful, Love, Passion, Selflove, Unrequited

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.

Cast, Everyday, Life, Result, Serious

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.

Absurd, Answers, Ideas, Novels, Writes, Writing

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

Creative, Hard Work, Work, Writing

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

Book, Books, Illuminates, Literature, Necessity

I get a warm feeling among my books.

Among, Book, Books, Feeling, Feelings, Warm

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.

Biographies, Circumstance, Happened, Memoirs, People, Thinking

You have to be a product of the product.

Product, Products

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.

Know, Life, Nasty, Nice, People

Writing is above all a question of instinct.

Instinct, Question, Writing

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

Essentially, Giving, Life, Self, Touch, Understanding

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. '

Bare, Delicate Life, Gave, Mind, Venturing, Vintage

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.

Book, Facts, Literature, Passed, Possess, Thousandth

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.

Closest, Important, Intimacy, Knowing, People

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.

Creaking, Dexterity, Hand, Hands, Lumbering, Seduction

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

Happens, People, Significant, Think, Thinking

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

Given, Pleasure, Want, Woman

Anthony Powell Biography

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