Anatole Broyard
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"Anatole Paul Broyard" was an American writer, literary critic and editor for The New York Times. In addition to his many reviews and columns, he published short stories, essays and two books during his lifetime. His autobiographical works, Intoxicated by My Illness (1992) and Kafka Was the Rage: A Greenwich Village Memoir (1993), were published after his death.

After his death, Broyard became the center of controversy and discussions related to how he had chosen to live as an adult in New York. A Louisiana Creole of mixed race, he was criticized by some blacks for "Passing (racial identity)/passing" as white as an adult and failing to acknowledge his African-American ancestry. Multiracial advocates though have cited Broyard as an example of someone forging their own racial identity long before it was acceptable in mainstream America.

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His father, Vincent, took him to La Coupole in Paris and, after sitting on the terrace for a while, walked off and forgot him. It was the perfect start in life for a writer.

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.

She was a spendthrift of the spirit, an American in Paris when, as Evelyn Waugh said, the going was good.

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.

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.

The first divorce in the world may have been a tragedy, but the hundred-millionth is not necessarily one.

Ruefulness is one of the classical tones of American fiction. It fosters a native, deglamorized form of anxiety.

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.

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.

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.