Quote

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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Anne Fadiman
Age: 71
Born: 1953
Born: August 7
Author
Essayist
Journalist
New York City
New York
Sitting
Chairs
Straws
Took
Hats
Stir
Head
Novelists
Novelist
Child
Puts
Removed
Reading
Wake
Irish
Away
John
Chair
Book
Shoes
Sisters
Straw
Children
Response
Placed
Wooden

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Americans admire success. Englishmen admire heroic failure
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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.
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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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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.
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E-mail is a modern Penny Post: the world is a single city with a single postal rate.
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You can miss a lot by sticking to the point.
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The action most worth watching is not at the center of things, but where edges meet.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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When I write after dark, observed Cyril Connolly, the shades of evening scatter their purple through my prose
Anne Fadiman
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For me, literature is a way of enlarging myself by learning about people who are not like me.
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.
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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
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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
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Reading aloud means no skipping, no skimming, no cutting to the chase.
Anne Fadiman
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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
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Pen-bereavement is a serious matter.
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