Quotable Powell #92

My admirations are not necessarily my influences. My favourite living novelist is Anthony Powell. If I ever took an influence from him it would destroy me because he writes such a controlled but leisurely way that if I put anything of that into my stuff, it would break the springs. I love those books.

Donald Westlake in a 1973 interview
Contributed by William Denton

Quotable Powell #91

Life becomes more and more like an examination where you have to guess the questions as well as the answers. I’d long decided there were no answers. I’m beginning to suspect there aren’t any questions either, none at least of any consequence, even the old perennial, whether or not to stay alive.

Anthony Powell, Books Do Furnish a Room
Contributed by Keith Marshall

Quotable Powell #90

Atwater ... began to bite the apple. It was green and tasted of absolutely nothing. It was like eating material in the abstract.

Anthony Powell, Afternoon Men
Contributed by B Douglas Russell

Quotable Powell #89

And so she was gone, ridiculous, lovely creature, absurdly hopeless and impossible love who was and always had been so far away. Absurdly lovely, hopeless creature who was gone away so that he would never see her again and would only remember her as an absurdly hopeless love.

Anthony Powell, Afternoon Men
Contributed by Dr Nicholas Birns

Quotable Powell #88

All that is wrong with Mr Powell's books is that there are not enough of them and they are too short.

Historian AJP Taylor
Contributed by Prof. Vernon Bogdanor