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

- Anthony Powell

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

- Anthony Powell

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

- Anthony Powell

Slowly, but very deliberately, the brooding edifice of seduction, creaking and incongruous, came into being, a vast Heath Robinson mechanism, dually …

- Anthony Powell

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

- Anthony Powell

For reasons not always at the time explicable, there are specific occasions when events begin suddenly to take on a significance previously unsuspect…

- Anthony Powell

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.

- Anthony Powell

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.

- Anthony Powell

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

- Anthony Powell