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 More Quotes by Anatole Broyard More Quotes From 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 reading talking book 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 writing jobs ideas Paranoids are the only ones who notice things anymore. Anatole Broyard The moment a book is lent I begin to miss it. Anatole Broyard moments missing book 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 possibility misunderstood punishment Ruefulness is one of the classical tones of American fiction. It fosters a native, deglamorized form of anxiety. Anatole Broyard tone anxiety fiction We don't simply read books. We become them. Anatole Broyard book Two people making love, she once said, are like one drowned person resuscitating the other. Anatole Broyard making-love two people Sometimes it seems that we might have been happier if we had once had an aristocracy to blame everything on. Anatole Broyard aristocracy government might Chic is a convent for unloved women. Anatole Broyard chic unloved An aphorism is a generalization of sorts, and our present-day writers seem more at home with the particular. Anatole Broyard aphorism particular home A whole generation of writers dined out on the dialectic between original cultures and their culture by "progress. Anatole Broyard progress generations culture Sex almost always disappoints me in novels. Everything can be said or done now, and that's what I often find: everything, a feeling of generality or dispersal. But in my experience, true sex is so particular, so peculiar to the person who yearns for it. Only he or she, and no one else, would desire so very much that very person under those circumstances. In fiction, I miss that sense of terrific specificity. Anatole Broyard missing writing sex 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 real play art 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. Anatole Broyard play writing people I feel about lending a book the way most fathers feel about their daughters living with a man out of wedlock. Anatole Broyard daughter father book Lapped in poetry, wrapped in the picturesque, armed with logical sentences and inalienable words. Anatole Broyard wrapped words logical poetry