A philosophy professor at my college, whose baby became enamored of the portrait of David Hume on a Penguin paperback, had the cover laminated in plastic, so her daughter could cut her teeth on the great thinker.

— 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

But like balloons, they were excessively buoyant, and if you weren't careful, they floated away.

— 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. Mine were Balkanized by nationality and subject.

— Anne Fadiman

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

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

— Anne Fadiman

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

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

— 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

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

— Anne Fadiman