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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.
Anne Fadiman
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Anne Fadiman
Age: 71
Born: 1953
Born: August 7
Author
Essayist
Journalist
New York City
New York
Good
Deal
Reveals
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Odd
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Mysterious
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Shelves
More quotes by Anne Fadiman
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
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
If my father were still writing essays, every full-grown 'girl' would probably be transformed into a'woman'.
Anne Fadiman
If you truly love a book, you should sleep with it, write in it, read aloud from it, and fill its pages with muffin crumbs.
Anne Fadiman
A philosophy professor at my college, whose baby became enamored of the portrait of David Hume on a Penguin paperback, had the cover laminated in plastic so her daughter could cut her teeth on the great thinker.
Anne Fadiman
Reading aloud means no skipping, no skimming, no cutting to the chase.
Anne Fadiman
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
I have never been able to resist a book about books.
Anne Fadiman
I'd rather have a book, but in a pinch I'll settle for a set of Water Pik instructions.
Anne Fadiman
If the soul cannot find its jacket. it is condemned to an eternity of wandering--naked and alone
Anne Fadiman
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
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
Books wrote our life story, and as they accumulated on our shelves (and on our windowsills, and underneath our sofa, and on top of our refrigerator), they became chapters in it themselves.
Anne Fadiman
Our view of reality is only a view, not reality itself.
Anne Fadiman
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
You can miss a lot by sticking to the point.
Anne Fadiman
In my view, nineteen pounds of old books are at least nineteen times as delicious as one pound of fresh caviar.
Anne Fadiman
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
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
It is a grave error to assume that ice cream consumption requires hot weather.
Anne Fadiman
