Anthony Powell Quotes

One of the illusions that we live by is that we can really know anybody else, and we're often surprised by traits in people that we thought we knew very well. The struggle to overcome loneliness, which is sort of our universal burden, leads us to leap to conclusions about who other people are.

When I was young as a teenager, that was the biggest mystery in the world to me: Why don't people connect?

In general, American social life constitutes an evasion of talking to people. Most Americans don't, in any vital sense, get together; they only do things together.

I would say our social relationships are relatively shallow. We are actually afraid to be intimate, with people - many people even with their wives and husbands.

Sometimes, when you're close to someone, you miss things. Other people can see them, but you can't.

It is important always to remember that virtual contact cannot and must not take the place of direct human contact with people at every level of our lives.

In a social environment that is ever crowded and impersonal, it is becoming increasingly important to reconsider the value of close personal relationships before we are driven to ask the forlorn question, 'Whatever happened to love?'

Nobody knows anybody. Not that well.

My theory is - we don’t really go that far into other people, even when we think we do. We hardly ever go in and bring them out. We just stand at the jaws of the cave, and strike a match, and ask quickly if anybody’s there.

The mystery in how little we know of other people is no greater than the mystery of how much, Laurel thought.

Maybe it's important to open up I people- people who are right there with you, not some thousand miles away in another universe. Or maybe it's something else. Maybe I should just settle for not knowing. Maybe it's just good to know that you're not the only one who doesn't know.

We all fall into our habits, our routines, our ruts. They're used quite often, consciously or unconsciously, to avoid living, to avoid doing the messy part of having relationships with other people, of dealing with a person next to us. That's why we can all be in a room on our cell phones and not have to deal with one another.

What is important to another person must be as important to you as the other person is to you

We're lonely, but we're afraid of intimacy. And so from social networks to sociable robots, we're designing technologies that will give us the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship.

A stranger is shot in the street, you hardly move to help. But if, half an hour before, you spent just ten minutes with the fellow and knew a little about him and his family, you might just jump in front of his killer and try to stop it. Really knowing is good. Not knowing, or refusing to know is bad, or amoral, at least. You can’t act if you don’t know.

I think that is why we stay close to our families, no matter how neurotic the members, how deeply annoying or dull- because when people have seen you at your worst, you don’t have to put on the mask as much.

I think that too many strangers were in her [Nina Simone's] life, and not enough people that she knew and loved.

More and more do I feel, as I advance in life, how little we really know of each other. Friendship seems to me like the touch of musical-glasses--it is only contact; but the glasses themselves, and their contents, remain quite distinct and unmingled.

I guess in my own life, privacy, anonymity, and the mystery of being lost are important. I also feel that people are mysterious and complex no matter what they do, and no matter how hard they try to reveal their own mystery.

We're in a hyper-connected world, and there's a crisis of connection. The first thing that God says about woman and man in the Bible is that it's not right for humans to be alone. Social media interaction cannot take the place of face-to-face interaction. If anything, it prevents us from doing that. We're staring into our screens for so long that we're forgetting to look at the people directly in front of us.

As you get older, your experiences become more precious. Nothing material is important to me. It's people who are precious.

It's important to keep the people who know you well around you. It helps center you.

No one will ever know anyone. We just have to deal with each other. You're not ever gonna know me.

It's an industry of lonely people in a crowd, Bill Margold was saying. 'They're scared to get close to each other. You're far better off having someone to sleep next to then having someone to sleep with because you have to trust someone you sleep next to.

I think there is a natural thing that you feel when you've written something taboo because you just don't want to expose the people you're close to.