Clifton Fadiman Quotes

A good memory is one trained to forget the trivial.

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.

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

I tried to use the questions and answers as an armature on which to build a sculpture of genuine conversation.

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

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

A cheese may disappoint. It may be dull, it may be naive, it may be oversophisticated. Yet it remains cheese, milk's leap toward immortality.

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

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

The German mind has a talent for making no mistakes but the very greatest.

To divide one's life by years is of course to tumble into a trap set by our own arithmetic. The calendar consents to carry on its dull wall-existence by the arbitrary timetables we have drawn up in consultation with those permanent commuters, Earth and Sun. But we, unlike trees, need grow no annual rings.

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

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

By the end of high school I was not of course an educated man, but I knew how to try to become one.

I think we must quote whenever we feel that the allusion is interesting or helpful or amusing.

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

As between mileage and experience choose experience.