Alberto Manguel, The Library At Night

Quotes

• “Our society accepts the book as a given, but the act of reading -- once considered useful and important, as well as pote...”
• “It hardly matters why a library is destroyed: every banning, curtailment, shredding, plunder or loot gives rise (at leas...”
• “In the dark, with the windows lit and the rows of books glittering, the library is a closed space, a universe of self-se...”
• “Digestion of words as well; I often read aloud to myself in my writing corner in the library, where no one can hear me, ...”
• “My books hold between their covers every story I've ever known and still remember, or have now forgotten, or may one day...”
• “I have no feelings of guilt regarding the books I have not read and perhaps will never read; I know that my books have u...”
• “In my fool hardy youth, when my friends were dreaming of heroic deeds in the realms of engineering and law, finance and ...”
• “Old books that we have known but not possessed cross our path and invite themselves over. New books try to seduce us dai...”
• “I like to imagine that, on the day after my last, my library and I will crumble together, so that even when I am no more...”
• “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...”
• “But at night, when the library lamps are lit, the outside world disappears and nothing but the space of books remains in...”
• “If every library is in some sense a reflection of its readers, it is also an image of that which we are not, and cannot ...”
• “Every reader exists to ensure for a certain book a modest immortality. Reading is, in this sense, a ritual of rebirth.”
• “One book calls to another unexpectedly, creating alliances across different cultures and centuries.”
• “If justice takes place, there may be hope, even in the face of a seemingly capricious divinity.”
• “Ultimately, the number of books always exceeds the space they are granted.”
• “Readers, censors know, are defined by the books they read.”
• “In a library, no empty shelf remains empty for long.”
• “Unpacking books is a revelatory activity.”