Clifton Fadiman

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

“Cheese - milk's leap toward immortality.”

“There are two kinds of writers - the great ones who can give you truths, and the lesser ones, who can only give you themselves.”

“Don't be afraid of poetry.”

“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.”

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

“The adjective is the banana peel of the parts of speech.”

“Mr. Faulkner, of course, is interested in making your mind rather than your flesh creep.”

“When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable.”

“Gertrude Stein was masterly in making nothing happen very slowly.”

“A good memory is one trained to forget the trivial.”

“There are two kinds of writers; the great ones who can give you truths, and the lessor ones, who can only give you themselves.”

“Experience teaches you that the man who looks you straight in the eye, particularly if he adds a firm handshake, is hiding something.”

“Insomnia is a gross feeder. It will nourish itself on any kind of thinking, including thinking about not thinking.”

“For most men life is a search for the proper manila envelope in which to get themselves filed.”

“As between mileage and experience choose experience.”

“My son is 7 years old. I am 54. It has taken me a great many years to reach that age. I am more respected in the community, I am stronger, I am more intelligent and I think I am better than...”

“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.”

“My main recollection is of the work I had to do in order to eat.”

“To take wine into our mouths is to savor a droplet of the river of human history.”