Anatole Broyard

Anatole Broyard was an American literary critic for the New York Times. He is notable for denying his African ancestry by passing as white.

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• 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.
  • New York Times 16th March 1973

• An aphorism is a generalization of sorts, and our present-day writers seem more at home with the particular.
  • ‘Wisdom of Aphorisms’, New York Times, 30th April 1983

• The contents of someone's bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral portrait.
  • ‘About Books, Recoiling, Rereading, Retelling’, New York Times, February 22, 1987

• A good book is never exhausted. It goes on whispering to you from the wall.
  • ‘About Books, Recoiling, Rereading, Retelling’, New York Times, February 22, 1987

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• 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.

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