Quotes from Anthony Powell

You know growing old's like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven't committed.

Choosing the type of girl one likes is about the last thing left that one is allowed to approach subjectively. I shall continue to exercise the option.

IT is not easy—perhaps not even desirable—to judge other people by a consistent standard. Conduct obnoxious, even unbearable, in one person may be readily tolerated in another; apparently indispensable principles of behaviour are in practice relaxed—not always with impunity—in the interests of those whose nature seems to demand an exceptional measure. That

Lovell was an odd mixture of realism and romanticism; more specifically, he was, like quite a lot of people, romantic about being a realist.

Hugh's flat was on the ground floor of a red-brick pile near Baker Street. To reach the door one clattered along a black-and-white stone passage, feeling like the last pawn left at a game of chess.

This was a glimpse through that mysterious door, once shut, that now seemed to stand ajar. It was as if sounds of far-off conflict, or the muffled din of music and shouting, dimly heard in the past, had now come closer than ever before. Stringham

Youth, dumb with embarrassment, breathless with exhibitionism, stuttering with nerves, inarticulate with conceit; the socially flamboyant, the robustly brawny, the crudely uninstructed, the palely epicene; one and all had obediently leapt through the hoop at Sillery's ringmaster behest; one and all submitted themselves to the testing flame of this burning fiery furnace of adolescent experience.

Changing the subject, she turned to me and said: 'I think poor Mr. Le Bas must be so glad that Charles has left at last. He used to write the most pathetic letters about him. Still, you weren't expelled, darling. That was clever of you.

A dance to the music of time.

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.

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

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

Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you have not committed.

One hears about life all the time from different people with very different narrative gifts.

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

Self-love seems so often unrequited.

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