Clifton Fadiman

“A cheese may disappoint. It may be dull, it may be naive, it may be oversophisticated. Yet it remains cheese, milk's leap toward immortality.”

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

“A sense of humor is the ability to understand a joke—and that the joke is oneself.”

“To define a schlemiel is to be one.”

“No man is an island, but some of us are long peninsulas.”

“A classic is a book that is not only still being read but is also still being talked about.”

“An anthology is a filtered library.”

“What you have not absorbed by the time you are thirty you will never absorb.”

“The books listed in this 'plan' are not the 'best' books... They are, rather, books that have stayed alive.”

“No one is required to read every book on this list. In fact, no one is required to read any of them.”

“To be a parent is to be a chief designer of a product more advanced than any existing invention.”

“The art of invective is a forgotten art.”

“A sense of humor is the only divine quality of man.”

“Cheese is milk's leap toward immortality.”

“When you re-read a classic you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before.”

“We are what we read.”

“The art of reading is in great part that of acquiring a better understanding of life from one's encounter with it in a book.”

“To be a parent is to be a chief designer of a product more advanced than any existing invention.”

“I have never been bored an hour in my life. I get up every morning wondering what new strange glamorous thing is going to happen and it happens at intervals.”

“An editor is a person who knows more about writing than writers do but has escaped the terrible desire to write.”