“ 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… 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 i… Anthony Powell
“ His mastery of the hard-luck story was of a kind never achieved by persons not wholly concentrated on themselves. Anthony Powell
“ Trapnel wanted, among other things, to be a writer, a dandy, a lover, a comrade, an eccentric, a sage, a virtuoso, a good chap, a man of honour, a hard case, a spendthrift, an opportunist, a raisonneu… Anthony Powell
“ On most of the occasions when I visited the Ufford, halls and reception rooms were so utterly deserted that the interior might almost have been Uncle Giles's private residence. Had he been a rich bach… Anthony Powell
“ There is, after all, no pleasure like that given by a woman who really wants to see you. Anthony Powell
“ He suddenly began to look wretched, much as I had seen him look as a schoolboy: lonely: awkward: unpopular: odd; no longer the self-confident businessman into which he had grown. His face now brought… 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… Anthony Powell
“ Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you have not committed. Anthony Powell
“ There is always an element of unreality, perhaps even of slight absurdity, about someone you love. Anthony Powell
“ Women may show some discrimination about whom they sleep with, but they'll marry anybody. 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 c… 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
“ But, in a sense, nothing in life is planned—or everything is—because in the dance every step is ultimately the corollary of the step before; the consequence of being the kind of person one chances to… 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 vist… Anthony Powell
“ Where, as again Vaughan writes, the liberated soul ascends, looking at the sunset towards the west wind, and hearing secret harmonies. Anthony Powell
