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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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Anne Fadiman
Age: 71
Born: 1953
Born: August 7
Author
Essayist
Journalist
New York City
New York
Parts
Scotch
Unless
Strictly
Hand
Confined
Books
Quarters
Hands
Maps
Book
Tape
Vagrants
Take
Unknown
Scissors
Believe
Likely
Unreliable

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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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For me, literature is a way of enlarging myself by learning about people who are not like me.
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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.
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It is a grave error to assume that ice cream consumption requires hot weather.
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Reading aloud means no skipping, no skimming, no cutting to the chase.
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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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I'd rather have a book, but in a pinch I'll settle for a set of Water Pik instructions.
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Anyone who doubts that caffeine is a drug should read some of the prose composed under its influence.
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If the soul cannot find its jacket. it is condemned to an eternity of wandering--naked and alone
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One reason we have children I think is to learn that parts of ourselves we had given up for dead are merely dormant and that the old joys can re emerge fresh and new and in a completely different form.
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I can imagine few worse fates than walking around for the rest of one's life wearing a typo.
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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 action most worth watching is not at the center of things, but where edges meet.
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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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One of the convenient things about literature is that, despite copyrights [...] a book belongs to the reader as well as to the writer.
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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.
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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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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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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.
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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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