Anatole Broyard Quotes

American - Critic | July 16, 1920 - October 11, 1990

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

PeaceMisunderstandingPunishment

Rome was a poem pressed into service as a city.

Anatole Broyard

ServiceCityRomePoemPressed

Lapped in poetry, wrapped in the picturesque, armed with logical sentences and inalienable words.

Anatole Broyard

WordsPoetryLogicalWrappedArmed

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

WorkJobPeopleFriendsYouTalk

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

LifeSelfFeelDebateI CanHuman

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

Anatole Broyard

WorldFriendsStopBeingWholeSome

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.

Anatole Broyard

LoveLooking BackWaitLookingBack

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

BeginningStartEndFindBeing Human

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

Anatole Broyard

BadTeethStickNovelsReader

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

ArtPeopleSeeingBadPlayMore

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

BookReadingTalkingBackMoreLike

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

ChildrenTimePresentNothingExpect

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