60 Quotes by Anatole Broyard

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.

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.

The more I like a book, the more reluctant I am to turn the page. Lovers, even book lovers, tend to cling. No one-night stands or “reads” for them.

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.

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.

I remember a table in BarchesterTowers that had more character than the combined heroes of three recent novels I’ve read.

A bookcase is as good as a view, as much of a panorama as the sight of a city or a river. There are dawns and sunsets in books – storms and zephyrs.

We don’t simply read books. We become them.

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.