Clifton Fadiman Quotes

Children love to be alone because alone is where they know themselves, and where they dream.

Lonely children often have imaginary playmates but I was never lonely; rather, I was solitary, and wanted no company at all other than books and movies, and my own imagination.

I was alone as a child. I lived in fairytales, adventures, Shakespeare. They are the friends, my books.

I didn't have anyone to play with so I made up my own world.

Introverts are offered keys to private gardens full of riches. To possess such a key is to tumble like Alice down her rabbit hole. She didn't choose to go to Wonderland - but she made of it an adventure that was fresh and fantastic and very much her own.

But she had long ago learned that when she wandered into the realm of fancy she must go alone. The way to it was by an enchanted path where not even her dearest might follow her.

Children know perfectly well that unicorns aren’t real, but they also know that books about unicorns, if they are good books, are true books.

I think the written word is my first love. I was just a very imagination - centered child and a big part of that imaginary life came from reading.

So let's not get frightened when the children read fantasy. It's the compost for a healthy mind. It stimulate s the inquisitive nodes, and there is some evidence that a rich internal fantasy life is as good and necessary for a child as healthy soil is for a plant, for much the same reasons.

My imaginary friends have become my imaginary children.

I read a lot growing up. It was kind of my comfort, you know; I loved it. I love story. I love narrative. I was academic. I wasn't particularly athletic. I didn't make the drill team. I didn't go out for sports.

When you're a little kid, you are small, your life is small - and you're terrifically aware of that. But when you read, you can ride Arabian horses across the desert, you can be a dogsledder.

I remember when I was very young, I had a fever - a long rheumatic fever in bed for four months. And in the days, I stayed alone with the maid. I only had my father's books with me. They were fantasy books about ghosts, and also books by Edgar Allen Poe that made a forever impression on me.

I had a very happy childhood, but I wasn't that happy a child. I liked being alone and creating characters and voices. I think that's when your creativity is developed, when you're young. I liked the world of the imagination because it was an easy place to go to.

I'm a private person in many ways.

I loved stories as a kid, both being read to me and enjoying on my own. All these stories inspired my imagination, and that's what I have always aimed at doing for my readers: ignite their imaginations.

There's a line I have that our family was designed more for public than for private. But there are definitely some things that are only mine. I am someone who dreams at night, and you don't know what I'm dreaming.

I think that most of the children's writers live in the world that they've created, and their children are kind of phantoms that wander around the edge of it in the world, but actually the children's writers are the children.

I was quiet, a loner. I was one of those children where, if you put me in a room and gave me some crayons and a pencils, you wouldn't hear from me for nine straight hours. And I was always drawing racing cars and rockets and spaceships and planes, things that were very fast that would take me away.

I was somebody who was not athletic. I was highly imaginative; I loved to read, and I loved nothing more than being in a story... I didn't want to play ball; I wanted to imagine something and read something.

I've always liked stories. I'm always reading, ever since I was a kid. I've always been reading and wanting to be in some other world.

While all the other kids were out playing ball and stuff, I used to stay in my room and imagine that there was a camera in the wall. And I used to really believe that I was putting on a television show and that it was going out to somewhere in the world.

I would love to meet J.K. Rowling and tell her how much I admire her writing and am amazed by her imagination. I read every 'Harry Potter' book as it came out and looked forward to each new one. I am rereading them now with my kids and enjoying them every bit as much. She made me look at jelly beans in a whole new way.

On a deeper level, there's a level of privacy that I need in order to work, and if there's been a time when there's been a lot of publicness in my life, it can be a little bit difficult to sort of rebuild that private space.

When people are reading a book, it's a personal thing. They're reading it; it's in their own mind; it's in their own personal space when they're reading it.