“Only yesterday a young woman came to me wanting a trap set for a man with a sweet smile and lithe arms. She was a fool, not for wanting him, but for wanting more of him than that.”

“Those who fear the imagination condemn it: something childish, they say, something monsterish, misbegotten. Not all of us dream awake. But those of us who do have no choice.”

“Some experiences are universal. A girl is a girl whether she lives in West Omaha or Sweet Valley. Books are often far more than books.”

“A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.”

“The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,And all the sweet serenity of books”

“my first recommendation to people in charge of science education is, more money for public libraries and museums. Public libraries and museums ought to be as common as schools.”

“Society was the only threat to the sanctity of selfhood: an unpatroned library was an orderly library.”

“If the library in the morning suggests an echo of the severe and reasonable wishful order of the world, the library at night seems to rejoice in the world's essential, joyful muddle. ”