46 quotes found
“It hardly matters why a library is destroyed: every banning, curtailment, shredding, plunder or loot gives rise (at least as a ghostly presence) to a louder, clearer, more durable library of the ba...”
“I have no feelings of guilt regarding the books I have not read and perhaps will never read I know that my books have unlimited patience. They will wait for me till the end of my days.”
“One book calls to another unexpectedly, creating alliances across different cultures and centuries. ”
“In the dark, with the windows lit and the rows of books glittering, the library is a closed space, a universe of self-serving rules that pretend to replace or translate those of the shapeless unive...”
“There is a line of poetry, a sentence in a fable, a word in an essay, by which my existence is justified; find that line, and immortality is assured.”
“A library is an ever-growing entity; it multiples seemingly unaided, it reproduces itself by purchase, theft, borrowings, gifts, by suggesting gaps through association, by demanding completion of s...”
“From fire, water, the passage of time, neglectful readers, and the hand of the censor, each of my books has escaped to tell me its story.”
“In any of my pages in any of my books may life a perfect account of my secret experience of the world. ”
“As readers, we have gone from learning a precious craft whose secret was held by a jealous few, to taking for granted a skin that has become subordinate to principles of mindless financial profit o...”
“Every reader has found charms by which to secure possession of a page that, by magic, becomes as if never read before, fresh and immaculate.”
“No one stepping for the first time into a room made of books can know instinctively how to behave, what is expected, what is promised, what is allowed. One may be overcome by horror--at the cluster...”
“Books have long been instruments of the divinatory arts. ”
“The stories that unfold in the space of a writer's study, the objects chosen to watch over a desk, the books selected to sit on the shelves, all weave a web of echoes and reflections of meanings an...”
“Darkness promotes speech.”
“Deserted libraries hold the shades of writers who worked within, and are haunted by their absence. ”
“Histories, chronologies and almanacs offer us the illusion of progress, even though, over and over again, we are given proof that there is no such thing.”
“At night, here in the library, the ghosts have voices.”
“The love of libraries, like most loves, must be learned. ”
“The weight of absence is as much a feature of any library as the constriction of order and space.”
“Libraries, whether my own or shared with a greater reading public, have always seemed to me pleasantly mad places, and for as long as I can remember I've been seduced by their labyrinthine logic, w...”
