Anatole Broyard quotes

Anatole Broyard was an American writer, literary critic, and editor, known for his work at The New York Times. His essays and reviews explored literature, identity, and culture with wit and insight. He became a notable figure in American literary circles and later gained recognition for the revelations about his complex personal background. Here are 16 of his quotes:

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

Anatole Broyard

Rome was a poem pressed into service as a city.

Anatole Broyard

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.

Anatole Broyard

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.

Anatole Broyard

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

An aphorism is a generalization of sorts, and our present-day writers seem more at home with the particular.

Anatole Broyard

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.

Anatole Broyard

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

Anatole Broyard

When friends stop being frank and useful to each other, the whole world loses some of its radiance.

Anatole Broyard

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.

Anatole Broyard

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.

Anatole Broyard

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

Anatole Broyard

A good book is never exhausted. It goes on whispering to you from the wall.

Anatole Broyard

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.

Anatole Broyard