THE PRATOUSSY FEEL

“You know, Jews, when they drop a prayer book are supposed to kiss it. This is what they teach you when you’re very little. It seemed entirely reasonable to me that you would do that. When I was a child I would kiss any book I dropped. When I was a very little child, after I’d read a book I really liked, I’d kiss it. Love is really the word. I think Children’s books are a human emotional experience rather than an intellectual one. You have a human relationship with them. Children have emotional relationships with inanimate objects, which it would be wise to carry on into adulthood. The way a child makes a person out of a doll, which I never did, I made people out of books.”

—Fran Lebowitz to Adam Thometz.