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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.

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
Live
Transfigured
Different
Ordinariness
Much
Elevated
Made
Lifted
Love
Publicity
People
Novels
Novel
Asks

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The epic implications of being human end in more than this: We start our lives as if they were momentous stories, with a beginning, a middle and an appropriate end, only to find that they are mostly middles.
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The tension between 'yes' and no', between 'I can' and 'I cannot,' makes us feel that, in so many instances, human life is an interminable debate with one's self.
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Either a writer doesn't want to talk about his work, or he talks about it more than you want.
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The moment a book is lent I begin to miss it.
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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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Aphorisms are bad for novels. They stick in the reader's teeth.
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I feel about lending a book the way most fathers feel about their daughters living with a man out of wedlock.
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We are all tourists in history, and irony is what we win in wars.
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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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When friends stop being frank and useful to each other, the whole world loses some of its radiance.
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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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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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The contents of someone's bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral portrait.
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There is something about seeing real people on a stage that makes a bad play more intimately, more personally offensive than any other art form.
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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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For years they have been using the role of 'sex object' as a cover while they spied out the land.
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Chic is a convent for unloved women.
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We don't simply read books. We become them.
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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.
Anatole Broyard
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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.
Anatole Broyard