Quote

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.

Anne Fadiman

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Anne Fadiman
Age: 71
Born: 1953
Born: August 7
Author
Essayist
Journalist
New York City
New York
Deals
Contains
Rest
Odd
Unrelated
Small
Owners
Inspection
Belief
Closer
Shelf
Upon
Mysterious
Owner
Everyone
Library
Rests
Long
Completely
Shelves
Good
Deal
Reveals

More quotes by Anne Fadiman

Image
Our view of reality is only a view, not reality itself.
Anne Fadiman
Image
If the soul cannot find its jacket. it is condemned to an eternity of wandering--naked and alone
Anne Fadiman
Image
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
Image
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
Image
To use an electronics analogy, closing a book on a bookmark is like pressing the Stop button, whereas when you leave the book facedown, you've only pressed Pause.
Anne Fadiman
Image
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
Image
For me, literature is a way of enlarging myself by learning about people who are not like me.
Anne Fadiman
Image
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
Image
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
Image
...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
Image
It is a grave error to assume that ice cream consumption requires hot weather.
Anne Fadiman
Image
In my view, nineteen pounds of old books are at least nineteen times as delicious as one pound of fresh caviar.
Anne Fadiman
Image
I can think of few better ways to introduce a child to books than to let her stack them, upend them, rearrange them, and get her fingerprints all over them.
Anne Fadiman
Image
When I write after dark, observed Cyril Connolly, the shades of evening scatter their purple through my prose
Anne Fadiman
Image
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
Image
The action most worth watching is not at the center of things, but where edges meet.
Anne Fadiman
Image
Reading aloud means no skipping, no skimming, no cutting to the chase.
Anne Fadiman
Image
I'd rather have a book, but in a pinch I'll settle for a set of Water Pik instructions.
Anne Fadiman
Image
My brother and I were able to fantasize far more extravagantly about our parents' tastes and desires, their aspirations and their vices, by scanning their bookcases than by snooping in their closest. Their selves were on their shelves.
Anne Fadiman
Image
I can imagine few worse fates than walking around for the rest of one's life wearing a typo.
Anne Fadiman