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We are all tourists in history, and irony is what we win in wars.

Anatole Broyard

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Anatole Broyard
Age: 70 †
Born: 1920
Born: July 16
Died: 1990
Died: October 11
Author
Journalist
Literary Critic
Writer
New Orleans
Louisiana
History
Tourism
Tourists
Irony
Wars
Winning
War

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I remember a table in BarchesterTowers that had more character than the combined heroes of three recent novels I've read.
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The more I like a book, the more slowly I read. this spontaneous talking back to a book is one of the things that makes reading so valuable.
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There are few things more subtly distressing than an inappropriate gift from someone close to you.
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Ruefulness is one of the classical tones of American fiction. It fosters a native, deglamorized form of anxiety.
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Chic is a convent for unloved women.
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In an age like ours, which is not given to letter-writing, we forget what an important part it used to play in people's lives.
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Rome was a poem pressed into service as a city.
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The moment a book is lent I begin to miss it.
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There was a time when we expected nothing of our children but obedience, as opposed to the present, when we expect everything of them but obedience.
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A bookcase is as good as a view, as much of a panorama as the sight of a city or a river. There are dawns and sunsets in books - storms and zephyrs.
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A book is meant not only to be read, but to haunt you, to importune you like a lover or a parent, to be in your teeth like a piece of gristle.
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To be misunderstood can be the writer's punishment for having disturbed the reader's peace. The greater the disturbance, the greater the possibility of misunderstanding.
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Sometimes it seems that we might have been happier if we had once had an aristocracy to blame everything on.
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People ... have no idea what a hard job it is for two writers to be friends. Sooner or later you have to talk about each other's work.
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If a book is really good, it deserves to be read again, and if it's great, it should be read at least three times.
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An aphorism is a generalization of sorts, and our present-day writers seem more at home with the particular.
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The more I like a book, the more reluctant I am to turn the page. Lovers, even book lovers, tend to cling. No one-night stands or reads for them.
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Travel is like adultery: one is always tempted to be unfaithful to one's own country. To have imagination is inevitably to be dissatisfied with where you live. There is in men, as Peter Quennell said, a centrifugal tendency. In our wanderlust, we are lovers looking for consummation.
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In novels, I said, people are transfigured by love. They’re elevated, made different, lifted out of their ordinariness…It’s not so much to ask, I said. I just want love to live up to its publicity.
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Aphorisms are bad for novels. They stick in the reader's teeth.
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