“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.”

—  Anne Fadiman

Source: Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "My brother and I were able to fantasize far more extravagantly about our parents' tastes and desires, their aspirations…" by Anne Fadiman?
Anne Fadiman photo
Anne Fadiman 11
American essayist, journalist and magazine editor 1953

Related quotes

Denis Diderot photo

“We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates.”

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist

As quoted in Thesaurus of Epigrams: A New Classified Collection of Witty Remarks, Bon Mots and Toasts (1942) by Edmund Fuller

James A. Michener photo

“I don't know who my parents were. I know nothing about my inheritance.”

James A. Michener (1907–1997) American author

Academy of Achievement interview (1991)
Context: I don't know who my parents were. I know nothing about my inheritance. I could be Jewish; I could be part Negro; I could be Irish; I could be Russian. I am spiritually a mix anyway, but I did have a solid childhood fortunately, because of some wonderful women who brought me up. I never had a father or a man in the house, and that was a loss, but you live with that loss.

“I think my parents were bewildered by my oddity.”

Antonella Gambotto-Burke book The Pure Weight of the Heart

Source: The Pure Weight of the Heart (1998), P. 3.

Jonathan Safran Foer photo

“My friends are appeased to stay in Odessa for their entire lives. They are appeased to age like their parents, and become parents like their parents. They do not desire anything more than everything they have known.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Everything Is Illuminated (2002)

William Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme photo

“It is my hope, and my brother’s hope… to build houses in which our work-people will be able to live and see comfortable. Semi-detached houses, with gardens back and front, in which they will be able to know more about the science of life than they can in a back slum, and in which they will learn that there is more enjoyment in life than a mere going to and returning from work, and looking forward to Saturday night to draw their wages.”

William Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme (1851–1925) English industrialist, philanthropist, and politician

Messrs. Lever’s New Soap Works, Port Sunlight, Cheshire. Full Reports of the Ceremony of Cutting the First Sod, and Proceedings at the Inaugural Banquet, 1888, pp.28-29; Cited in: Viscount William Hulme Lever Leverhulme, ‎William Hulme Lever Leverhulme (2d viscount) (1927). Viscount Leverhulme, p. 49

Heidi Klum photo

“My parents were free about nudity, and we are too. I’d like our children to feel unashamed of whatever shape they are. People should worry about other things.”

Heidi Klum (1973) German model, television host, businesswoman, fashion designer, television producer, and actress

Quoted in InStyle (September 2007)

Leonardo DiCaprio photo

“I like my name. My parents were in the Uffizi Gallery looking at a Leonardo Da Vinci when my mom felt me kick. That's how I got my name. My parents were real hippies.”

Leonardo DiCaprio (1974) American actor and film producer

http://www.popmonk.com/actors/leonardo-dicaprio/quotes-leonardo-dicaprio.htm

“I thought we should require physical determinations, and not abstract integrations. A pernicious taste begins to infiltrate, from which real science will suffer far more than it will progress, and it would be often better for the true physics if there were no mathematics in the world.”

Daniel Bernoulli

Ich vermeinte, man verlange physische Determinationen und nicht abstracte integrationes. Es fängt sich ein verderblicher goût an einzuschleichen, durch welchen die wahren Wissenschaften viel mehr leiden, als sie avancirt werden, und wäre es oft besser für die realem physicam, wenn keine Mathematik auf der Welt wäre.
Letter to Leonhard Euler, 26 January 1750, published in [Correspondance mathématique et physique de quelques célèbres géomètres du XVIIIème siècle, P. H. Fuss, Saint Petersburg, 1843, 650]

Milkha Singh photo

“Our entire village of Gobindpur Kot had been massacred, as the elders had taken a collective decision not to convert to Islam as they had been asked to. Among those killed were my parents and two of my sisters. My elder brother survived; a sepoy in the British army, he was posted at Multan. Two of my other sisters were married and lived elsewhere.”

Milkha Singh (1935) Indian track and field athlete

Flying Sikh': Indian sprinter Milkha Singh biopic set for release, 12 July 2013, 13 December 2013, BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-23241269,

Willem Maris photo

“As far as I can remember, it was before my twelfth year that I was sketching cows in the mornings before and afternoons after school, and because my brothers were 4 and 6 years older than me – naturally I got from them my first teachings in drawing and later in painting.”

Willem Maris (1844–1910) Dutch landscape painter of the Hague School (1844-1910)

translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
version in original Dutch / origineel citaat van Willem Maris: Voor zover ik mij herinneren kan, was ik voor mijn twaalfde jaar 's Morgens voor, en 's middags na schooltijd al in de weilanden aan 't teekenen van koeien en daar mijn broers 4 en 6 jaar ouder waren als ik - genoot ik natuurlijk van hen het eerste onderwijs in het teekenen en later in het schilderen.
Quote of Willem Maris, in his letter in 1901; as cited in 'Zó Hollands - Het Hollandse landschap in de Nederlandse kunst sinds 1850', Antoon Erftemeijer https://www.franshalsmuseum.nl/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/zohollands_eindversie_def_1.pdf; Frans Hals museum | De Hallen, Haarlem 2011, p. 36

Related topics