“My mind couldn't fit itself around the shape of his absence.”

“Grief made fools of us all. There was shock in it, but there could hardly be surprise.”

“A splinter of pride got in under my breast-bone and lodged there.”

“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. ”