Quotessence
Home / Authors / Alberto Manguel
Alberto Manguel

Alberto Manguel Quotes

Writer

Filter quotes by topic

AllBookLibraryReaderReadingPagesWorldBooksIfsStoriesKnowsWritingSpaceMayNightShelvesWayCertainLiteratureReasonWells

Famous Alberto Manguel Quotes

“Hesse wrote an essay on what he saw as the world's publishing crisis and the fate of the book. Hesse concluded his talk with these words: 'Only a few sacred books that humankind treasures hold the regenerating power and survive throughout the millennia and the world crises. It is reassuring to see that the situation does not depend on the distribution of these works. It is not necessary for millions, even hundreds of thousands of readers to have appropriated for themselves this or that sacred book. It is enough that a few people should have been touched by them.”

BooksOptimism
Book:Maimonides: Faith in Reason
Create image

“When I'm in a library, any library, I have the sense of being translated into a purely verbal dimension by a conjuring trick I've never quite understood. I know that my full, true story is there, somewhere on the shelves, and all I need is time and the chance to find it. I never do. My story remains elusive because it is never the definitive story.”

SelfStoriesBooksTransformationLibraryStoryLibraries
Book:Packing My Library: An Elegy and Ten Digressions
Create image

“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 or the vastness, the stillness, the mocking reminder of everything one doesn't know, the surveillance--and some of that overwhelming feeling may cling on, even after the rituals and conventions are learned, the geography mapped, and the natives found friendly.”

BookBooksLibraryLibraries
Book:The Library at Night
Create image

“Systematisches Lesen ist kaum von Nutzen. Offizielle Bücherlisten (der Klassiker, der Literaturgeschichte, der zensurierten oder empfohlenen Bücher, der Bibliothekskataloge) können per Zufall den einen oder anderen nützlichen Hinweis geben. Die beste Anleitung bieten persönliche Launen – das Vertrauen auf das Lustprinzip und der Glaube an den Zufall -, die uns manchmal in einen provisorischen Zustand der Gnade versetzen, uns ermöglichen, Gold aus Flachs zu spinnen.”

ReadingBooksBibliophily
Book:Into the Looking-Glass Wood: Essays on Books, Reading, and the World
Create image