Anne Fadiman Quotes

I love the physicality of books.

I am still a lover of paper books. One of my first jobs was in a bookstore, and I still like to be able to write in a margin and feel the paper. Once inside of a digital device, I end up losing things.

Nearly everyone underestimates how powerful the touch of another person's hand can be. The need to be touched is something so primal, so fundamentally a part of our existence as human beings that its true impact upon us can be difficult to put into words. That power doesn't necessarily have anything to do with sex, either. From the time we are infants, we learn to associate the touch of a human hand with safety, with comfort, with love.

I don't own a Kindle, no. I love books, they are beautiful objects.

I love my Kindle, but there are many books that I need to physically own. I think having the choice makes all the difference. Instant gratification - buying a book digitally and owning it sixty seconds later - really is a revolutionary act.

There's a time and place for the Kindle, and I own one now and have books on it that I don't otherwise have. But I don't find that my hand reaches out for it the way it does for a trade paperback, or (in the middle of the night) for the iPod Touch.

I know I'm old-fashioned, but there's just something about the act of looking at books versus taking in information on a screen, which is so one-dimensional. There's a sense of ownership that you have with books, a physical connection.

If forced to choose between a book and a Kindle, I'd opt for the comfort and ease of bound pages. I mean, I can't break a book if I drop it on a cement floor.

Computers are magnificent tools for the realization of our dreams, but no machine can replace the human spark of spirit, compassion, love, and understanding.

I still buy actual books. The smell, having it in your hands - there's really no substitute.

I love theater. I love sitting in an audience and having the actors right there, playing out what it means to be a human being.

You have a physical human reaction to something that another human being made. When you remove the human from it, and you chop it up, make it all perfect, you have a different reaction. Something is not there. You can feel it when it's there.

A computer does not smell ... if a book is new, it smells great. If a book is old, it smells even better… And it stays with you forever. But the computer doesn’t do that for you. I’m sorry.

My heart is definitely here, and there's no place like home.

I hate reading digital books. I don't enjoy the experience. I like smelling the paper, turning the pages. I think the book as we've always known it is an efficient technology.

Food like love is a deeply emotional matter.

It felt very good to have him walking beside her. Good like rest and quiet, like something you could live without but you needed anyway. That you had to learn how to miss, and then you'd never stop missing it.

Much is to be gained by eBooks: ease, convenience, portability. But something is definitely lost: tradition, a sensual experience, the comfort of thingy-ness - a little bit of humanity.

I still love books. Nothing a computer can do can compare to a book. You can't really put a book on the Internet. Three companies have offered to put books by me on the Net, and I said, 'If you can make something that has a nice jacket, nice paper with that nice smell, then we'll talk.' All the computer can give you is a manuscript. People don't want to read manuscripts. They want to read books. Books smell good. They look good. You can press it to your bosom. You can carry it in your pocket.

There is little one can say about love. It has to be lived, and it's always in motion.

I find it difficult to see the romance in digital.

We need others. We need others to love and we need to be loved by them. There is no doubt that without it, we too, like the infant left alone, would cease to grow, cease to develop, choose madness and even death.

"What is the most beautiful word in the language?" The elderly lawyer quickly replied: "Home."

Love is our human miracle.

I was raised among books, making invisible friends in pages that seemed cast from dust and whose smell I carry on my hands to this day.