Anne Fadiman - Books Quotes

10 Sourced Quotes

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I'd rather have a book, but in a pinch I'll settle for a set of Water Pik instructions.

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
In my view, nineteen pounds of old books are at least nineteen times as delicious as one pound of fresh caviar.

Anne Fadiman
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
It is customary to speak of children as vessels into which books are poured, but I think the reverse analogy is more accurate: children pour themselves into books, changing their shape to fit each vessel.

Anne Fadiman
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
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
If a book read when young is a lover, that same book, reread later on, is a friend.

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
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