{"author":"Anne Fadiman","author_id":"Anne+Fadiman","total_quotes":27,"quotes":[{"text":"Muses are fickle, and many a writer, peering into the voice, has escaped paralysis by ascribing the creative responsibility to a talisman: a lucky charm, a brand of paper, but most often a writing instrument. Am I writing well? Thank my pen. Am I writing badly? Don't blame me blame my pen. By such displacements does the fearful imagination defend itself.","author":"Anne Fadiman","tags":["imagination","muses","paper","pen","writer","writing"],"id":4454,"author_id":"Anne+Fadiman"},{"text":"Reading aloud means no skipping, no skimming, no cutting to the chase.","author":"Anne Fadiman","tags":["reading"],"id":17813,"author_id":"Anne+Fadiman"},{"text":"But like balloons, they were excessively buoyant, and if you weren't careful, they floated away.","author":"Anne Fadiman","tags":["words"],"id":35323,"author_id":"Anne+Fadiman"},{"text":"In my view, nineteen pounds of old books are at least nineteen times as delicious as one pound of fresh caviar.","author":"Anne Fadiman","tags":["book","books"],"id":50856,"author_id":"Anne+Fadiman"},{"text":"We spread our sleeping bags on the snow and crawled inside. The vantage point was dizzying. It was impossible to tell whether the comet was above us or we were above the comet; we were all falling through space, missing the stars by inches.","author":"Anne Fadiman","tags":["comet","perspective","scale","space"],"id":59777,"author_id":"Anne+Fadiman"},{"text":"The Hmong never had any interest in ruling over the Chinese or anyone else; they wanted merely to be left alone, which, as their later history was also to illustrate, may be the most difficult request any minority can make of a majority culture.","author":"Anne Fadiman","tags":["culture"],"id":82623,"author_id":"Anne+Fadiman"},{"text":"You're a romantic. What's romantic about a guy wanting to go somewhere and actually getting there?","author":"Anne Fadiman","tags":["romantic"],"id":86701,"author_id":"Anne+Fadiman"},{"text":"It has long been my belief that everyone's library contains an Odd Shelf. On this shelf rests a small, mysterious corpus of volumes whose subject matter is completely unrelated to the rest of the library, yet which, upon closer inspection, reveals a good deal about its owner.","author":"Anne Fadiman","tags":["books","library","readers"],"id":102583,"author_id":"Anne+Fadiman"},{"text":"My brother and I were able to fantasize far more extravagantly about our parents' tastes and desires, their aspirations and their vices, by scanning their bookcases than by snooping in their closest. Their selves were on their shelves.","author":"Anne Fadiman","tags":["books","bookshelves","parents","shelves"],"id":128169,"author_id":"Anne+Fadiman"},{"text":"I'd rather have a book, but in a pinch I'll settle for a set of Water Pik instructions.","author":"Anne Fadiman","tags":["addiction","reading"],"id":133573,"author_id":"Anne+Fadiman"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":27,"pages":3,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}