Anthony Powell

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

“The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable.”

“In the end, most things in life—perhaps all things—turn out to be appropriate.”

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

“All human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil.”

“What is sad about the past is that it is past.”

“Reading novels needs almost as much talent as writing them.”

“Human life is presented to us as a tapestry, a web, a puzzle, something to be unravelled.”

“Life is full of internal dramas, instantaneous and sensational, played to an audience of one.”

“Books do furnish a room.”

“Jealousy is no more than feeling alone against smiling enemies.”

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

“A man's friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage — but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends.”

“There is no substitute for the printed word.”

“Coming to terms with yourself is a moral imperative.”