Clifton Fadiman's Quotes

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

Cheese is milk's leap towards immortality.

A sense of humor is the ability to understand a joke - and that the joke is oneself.

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

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

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

As between mileage and experience choose experience.

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

Gertrude Stein was masterly in making nothing happen very slowly.

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

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

When you read a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before.

A bottle of wine begs to be shared; I have never met a miserly wine lover.

One measure of friendship consists not in the number of things friends can discuss, but in the number of things they need no longer mention.

Cheese - milk's leap toward immortality.

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

He has made a profession out of a business and an art out of a profession.

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

To feel at home, stay at home.

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

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.

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

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 he is. I don't want to be a pal, I want to be a father.