Quote

For me, literature is a way of enlarging myself by learning about people who are not like me.

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
Enlarging
Learning
Literature
Way
Like
People

More quotes by Anne Fadiman

Image
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
Image
The action most worth watching is not at the center of things, but where edges meet.
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
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.
Anne Fadiman
Image
Anyone who doubts that caffeine is a drug should read some of the prose composed under its influence.
Anne Fadiman
Image
If the soul cannot find its jacket. it is condemned to an eternity of wandering--naked and alone
Anne Fadiman
Image
When I write after dark, observed Cyril Connolly, the shades of evening scatter their purple through my prose
Anne Fadiman
Image
You can miss a lot by sticking to the point.
Anne Fadiman
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I'd rather have a book, but in a pinch I'll settle for a set of Water Pik instructions.
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
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
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
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
Our view of reality is only a view, not reality itself.
Anne Fadiman
Image
Pen-bereavement is a serious matter.
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
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