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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
Anxiety
Fiction
American
Form
Fosters
Tones
Classical
Native
Tone

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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 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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Paranoids are the only ones who notice things anymore.
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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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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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Either a writer doesn't want to talk about his work, or he talks about it more than you want.
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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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The first divorce in the world may have been a tragedy, but the hundred-millionth is not necessarily one.
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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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