Anne Fadiman Quotes About Books

Quotes about: Books

• 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

  Book, Writing, Sleep

• My daughter is seven, and some of the other second-grade parents complain that their children don't read for pleasure. When I visit their homes, the children's rooms are crammed with expensive books, but the parent's rooms are empty. Those children do not see their parents reading, as I did every day of my childhood. By contrast, 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 child sprawled on the bed, reading.

  Anne Fadiman

  Daughter, Children, Book

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

  Anne Fadiman

  Book, Views, Nineteen

  Anne Fadiman (2011). “Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader”, p.148, Macmillan

• 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

  Children, Book, Thinking

• 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

  Book, Stories, Refrigerators

  Anne Fadiman (2011). “Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader”, p.15, Macmillan

• I have never been able to resist a book about books.

  Anne Fadiman

  Book, Able

  Anne Fadiman (2011). “Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader”, p.139, Macmillan

• 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

  Book, Literature, Copyright

  Anne Fadiman (2008). “At Large and At Small: Familiar Essays”, p.88, Macmillan

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

  Anne Fadiman

  Book, Water, Settling

  Anne Fadiman (2011). “Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader”, p.113, Macmillan

• 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

  Book, Buttons, Use

  Anne Fadiman (2011). “Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader”, p.39, Macmillan

• Some day, as soon as a book is printed it will be simultaneously put into digital form. That will be a wonderful research tool, but it will never substitute for holding the book. I feel certain that at least within my lifetime, everyone will still be going to the bookstore and buying printed books. Thank God I'll die before I have to worry about whether the printed book itself will disappear. That's something I don't want to live to see.

  Anne Fadiman

  Book, Worry, Thank God

• ...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

  Book, Symphony, Shelves

• 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

  Children, Book, Reading

  Anne Fadiman (2011). “Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader”, p.13, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

• 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

  Book, Grateful, Smell

  "Lust for words, and ice-cream too" by Robert McCrum, www.theguardian.com. November 25, 2007.

• 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

  Believe, Book, Scotch

  Anne Fadiman (2011). “Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader”, p.4, Macmillan

• 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

  Children, Book, Reading

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