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Ruefulness is one of the classical tones of American fiction. It fosters a native, deglamorized form of anxiety.

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
Form
Fosters
Tones
Classical
Native
Tone
Anxiety
Fiction
American

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A whole generation of writers dined out on the dialectic between original cultures and their culture by progress.
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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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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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It is one of the paradoxes of American literature that our writers are forever looking back with love and nostalgia at lives they couldn't wait to leave.
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There are few things more subtly distressing than an inappropriate gift from someone close to you.
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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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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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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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Chic is a convent for unloved women.
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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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Either a writer doesn't want to talk about his work, or he talks about it more than you want.
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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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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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We are all tourists in history, and irony is what we win in wars.
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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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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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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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When friends stop being frank and useful to each other, the whole world loses some of its radiance.
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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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