“Everything we care about lies somewhere in the middle, where pattern and randomness interlace.”

“Its not an academic question any more to ask whats going to happen to a cloud. People very much want to knowand that means theres money available for it. That problem is very much within the realm ...”

“Vengeful conquerors burn books as if the enemy's souls reside there, too.”

“The library remains a sacred place for secular folk ["What Libraries Can (Still) Do," The New York Review Daily, October 26, 2015].”

“the library is the last free space for the gathering and sharing of knowledge: Our attention cannot be bought and sold in a library. As a tradition barely a century and a half old in the United Sta...”

“There are two kinds of geniuses: the 'ordinary' and the 'magicians'. An ordinary genius is a fellow whom you and I would be just as good as, if we were only many times better. There is no mystery a...”

“All the most powerful emotions come from chaos -fear,anger,love- especially love. Love is chaos itself. Think about it! Love makes no sense. It shakes you up and spins you around. And then, eventua...”

“If for a moment you are inclined to regard these taluses as mere draggled, chaotic dumps, climb to the top of one of them, and run down without any haggling, puttering hesitation, boldly jumping fr...”

“She imagines him imagining her. This is her salvation.In spirit she walks the city, traces its labyrinths, its dingy mazes: each assignation, each rendezvous, each door and stair and bed. What he s...”

“His way had therefore come full circle, or rather had taken the form of an ellipse or a spiral, following as ever no straight unbroken line, for the rectilinear belongs only to Geometry and not to ...”

“In reality the universe has no geometry.”

“Speed is simply the rite that initiates us intoemptiness: a nostalgic desire for forms to revert to immobility, concealed beneath the very intensification of their mobility. Akin to the nostalgia f...”