A sense of humor is the ability to understand a joke - and that the joke is oneself.
Clifton Fadiman

As between mileage and experience choose experience.
Clifton Fadiman

By the end of high school I was not of course an educated man, but I knew how to try to become one.
Clifton Fadiman

Cheese is milk's leap towards immortality.
Clifton Fadiman

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

For most men, life is a search for the proper manila envelope in which to get themselves filed.
Clifton Fadiman

Gertrude Stein was masterly in making nothing happen very slowly.
Clifton Fadiman

I tried to use the questions and answers as an armature on which to build a sculpture of genuine conversation.
Clifton Fadiman

Insomnia is a gross feeder. It will nourish itself on any kind of thinking, including thinking about not thinking.
Clifton Fadiman

My main recollection is of the work I had to do in order to eat.
Clifton Fadiman


The German mind has a talent for making no mistakes but the very greatest.
Clifton Fadiman

When you read a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before.
Clifton Fadiman