Anne Fadiman

“...in the midst of the tumult, part ecstasy and part panic, into which all first-time mothers are thrown by sleep deprivation and…

— Anne Fadiman

“He simply could not imagine a time when being a Jew, or even a half Jew, was not a disability.”

— Anne Fadiman

“When he looked back at the menu as an old man, it brought back everything; the food, the wine, the private dining…

— Anne Fadiman

“His books commingled democratically, united under the all-inclusive flag of Literature. Some were vertical, some horizontal, and some actually placed behind others.…

— Anne Fadiman

“her father had built from ax-hewn planks thatched with bamboo and grass. The floor was dirt, but it was clean. Her mother,…

— Anne Fadiman

Some day, as soon as a book is printed it will be simultaneously put into digital form. That will be a wonderful…

— Anne Fadiman

The most important thing when starting out with essay writing is to find a voice with which you're comfortable. You need to…

— Anne Fadiman

“we expect a wine of quality to demand something from us.”

— Anne Fadiman

“Going through a dead parent's memorabilia is a hazardous undertaking; there is a fine line between pleasure and pain.”

— Anne Fadiman

“He was constantly, pathologically, insanely busy. That’s how he afforded the wine.”

— Anne Fadiman

...the reader who plucks a book from her shelf only once is as deprived as the listener who, after attending a single…

— Anne Fadiman

“Benjamin Franklin wrote that he would like to be embalmed in a cask of Madeira”

— Anne Fadiman

“It has long been my belief that everyone's library contains an Odd Shelf. On this shelf rests a small, mysterious corpus of…

— Anne Fadiman

If you truly love a book, you should sleep with it, write in it, read aloud from it, and fill its pages…

— Anne Fadiman

Something amazing happens when the rest of the world is sleeping. I am glued to my chair. I forget that I ever…

— Anne Fadiman

I can think of few better ways to introduce a child to books than to let her stack them, upend them, rearrange…

— Anne Fadiman

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

— Anne Fadiman

“When the corpses of [Sir John] Franklin's officers and crew were later discovered, miles from their ships, the men were found to…

— Anne Fadiman

I am very grateful to the electronic world for making my life easier, but there is something about holding a book -…

— Anne Fadiman

The action most worth watching is not at the center of things, but where edges meet.

— Anne Fadiman

“You go from the north of Laos and then you go across the Mekong, and when the Pathet Lao soldiers fire, you…

— Anne Fadiman

Our view of reality is only a view, not reality itself.

— Anne Fadiman

“A sonnet might look dinky, but it was somehow big enough to accommodate love, war, death, and O.J. Simpson. You could fit…

— Anne Fadiman

I, on the other hand, believe that books, maps, scissors, and Scotch tape dispensers are all unreliable vagrants, likely to take off…

— Anne Fadiman

My daughter is seven, and some of the other second-grade parents complain that their children don't read for pleasure. When I visit…

— Anne Fadiman