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One of the convenient things about literature is that, despite copyrights [...] a book belongs to the reader as well as to the writer.

Anne Fadiman

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Anne Fadiman
Age: 71
Born: 1953
Born: August 7
Author
Essayist
Journalist
New York City
New York
Writer
Literature
Wells
Copyrights
Book
Copyright
Well
Convenient
Things
Belongs
Despite
Reader

More quotes by Anne Fadiman

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The action most worth watching is not at the center of things, but where edges meet.
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For me, literature is a way of enlarging myself by learning about people who are not like me.
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It has long been my belief that everyone's library contains an Odd Shelf. On this shelf rests a small, mysterious completely unrelated to the rest of the library, yet which, upon closer inspection, reveals a good deal about its owner.
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If my father were still writing essays, every full-grown 'girl' would probably be transformed into a'woman'.
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Anyone who doubts that caffeine is a drug should read some of the prose composed under its influence.
Anne Fadiman
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It is a grave error to assume that ice cream consumption requires hot weather.
Anne Fadiman
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when I walk into an apartment with books on the shelves, books on the bedside tables, books on the floor, and books on the toilet tank, then I know what I would see if I opened the door that says Private - grownups keep out: a children sprawled on the bed, reading.
Anne Fadiman
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It is a truism of epistolary psychology that, for example, a Christmas thank-you note written on December 26 can say any old thing, but if you wait until February, you are convinced that nothing less than Middlemarch will do.
Anne Fadiman
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Our view of reality is only a view, not reality itself.
Anne Fadiman
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I, on the other hand, believe that books, maps, scissors, and Scotch tape dispensers are all unreliable vagrants, likely to take off for parts unknown unless strictly confined to quarters.
Anne Fadiman
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In my view, nineteen pounds of old books are at least nineteen times as delicious as one pound of fresh caviar.
Anne Fadiman
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I'd rather have a book, but in a pinch I'll settle for a set of Water Pik instructions.
Anne Fadiman
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When the Irish novelist John McGahern was a child, his sisters unlaced and removed one of his shoes while he was reading. He did not stir. They placed a straw hat on his head. No response. Only when they took away the wooden chair on which he was sitting did he, as he puts it, 'wake out of the book'.
Anne Fadiman
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I am very grateful to the electronic world for making my life easier, but there is something about holding a book - the smell and the world of association. Even when e-books are perfected, as they surely will be, it will be like being in bed with a very well-made robot rather than a warm, soft, human being whom you love.
Anne Fadiman
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When I visit a new bookstore, I demand cleanliness, computer monitors, and rigorous alphabetization. When I visit a secondhand bookstore, I prefer indifferent housekeeping, sleeping cats, and sufficient organizational chaos.
Anne Fadiman
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Pen-bereavement is a serious matter.
Anne Fadiman
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...the reader who plucks a book from her shelf only once is as deprived as the listener who, after attending a single performance of a Beethoven symphony, never hears it again.
Anne Fadiman
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E-mail is a modern Penny Post: the world is a single city with a single postal rate.
Anne Fadiman
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I have never been able to resist a book about books.
Anne Fadiman
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I can imagine few worse fates than walking around for the rest of one's life wearing a typo.
Anne Fadiman