Clifton Fadiman Quotes

“The kind of poetry to avoid in the pretty-pretty kind that pleased our grandmothers, the kind that Longfellow and Tennyson, good poets at their best, wrote at their worst.”

“Reading to small children is a specialty.”

“Don't be afraid of poetry.”

“Gratitude is the language of love.”

“A cool white, wintry light glazed the buildings on the highest hill: Will’s memorial, the unsightly chimney from the hospital, the modernist cathedral in Clifton. The jumble of styles and eras lent the city the semblance of a medieval Roman town. Laura drove the long way round, up past the Clifton Suspension Bridge, strung like an a engineer’s dream over a river sinking into the mud. Leigh Woods was on the far side, the trees dark, bereft of leaves, clawing at the sky.”

“Write about society as news and treat it like sociology.”

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

“People wish to be poets more than they wish to write poetry, and that's a mistake. One should wish to celebrate more than one wishes to be celebrated.”

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

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