Anatole Broyard Quotes

Aphorisms are bad for novels. They stick in the reader's teeth.

The contents of someone's bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral portrait.

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.

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.

Two people making love, she once said, are like one drowned person resuscitating the other."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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