Clifton Fadiman - Book Quotes

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When you re-read a classic you do not see in the book more than you did before. You see more in you than there was before.

Clifton Fadiman

Books act like a developing fluid on film. That is, they bring into consciousness what you didn't know you knew.

Clifton Fadiman

Seriously, I do not know what to say of this book [ Absalom, Absalom!] except that it seem to point to the final blowup of what was once a remarkable, if minor, talent… this is a penny dreadful tricked up in fancy language and given a specious depth by the expert manipulation of a series of eccentric technical tricks. The characters have no magnitude and no meaning because they have no more reality than a mince-pie nightmare.

Clifton Fadiman

When you reread a classic you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before.

Clifton Fadiman

Socrates called himself a midwife of ideas. A great book is often such a midwife, delivering to full existence what has been coiled like an embryo in the dark, silent depths of the brain.

Clifton Fadiman