# Quote — Anne Fadiman, Ex Libris

> I hasten to mention that I have never actually solicited a catalogue. Although it is tempting to conclude that our mailbox hatches them by spontaneous generation, I know they are really the offspring of promiscuous mailing lists, which copulate in secret and for money. One of the pleasures, or horrors, of the direct-mail business is that you never know to whom your name will be pandered. My friend Ross Baughman, a photographer who once accompanied a group of American mercenaries to Nicaragua, inquired before the trip about a mail-order night-vision scope that would allow him to take pictures during midnight commando raids without using a flash. Ever since, he has been deluge with catalogs for pamphlets on how to make rifle silencers out of old car mufflers and napalm out of laundry detergent.

- Author: [Anne Fadiman](https://www.leafyquotes.com/anne-fadiman.md)
- Book: [Ex Libris](https://www.leafyquotes.com/anne-fadiman/ex-libris.md)
- Page: 114
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Anne_Fadiman#Ex_Libris:_Confessions_of_a_Common_Reader_(1998)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/anne-fadiman/ex-libris/i-hasten-to-mention

## More from this book

> Over time, my crush on Balder the Beautiful was converted into a crush on Ross, Franklin, Nares, Shackleton, Oates, and Scott.
>
> I should mention that all of the above explorers were unqualified failures. Not coincidentally, they were also all British. Americans admire success. Englishmen admire heroic failure.

p. 24 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/anne-fadiman/ex-libris/over-time-my-crush.md)

> These men may have been incompetent bunglers, but, by God, they were gentlemen.

p. 25 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/anne-fadiman/ex-libris/these-men-may.md)