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Library Quotes

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Library Quotes

“I’m completely library educated. I’ve never been to college. I went down to the library when I was in grade school in Waukegan, and in high school in Los Angeles, and spent long days every summer in the library. I used to steal magazines from a store on Genesee Street, in Waukegan, and read them and then steal them back on the racks again. That way I took the print off with my eyeballs and stayed honest. I didn’t want to be a permanent thief, and I was very careful to wash my hands before I read them. But with the library, it’s like catnip, I suppose: you begin to run in circles because there’s so much to look at and read. And it’s far more fun than going to school, simply because you make up your own list and you don’t have to listen to anyone. When I would see some of the books my kids were forced to bring home and read by some of their teachers, and were graded on—well, what if you don’t like those books?”

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Author:Ray Bradbury
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“I wish my collection were larger for your benefit and my credit. Honestly, my attention generally diverts elsewhere. I own a few books, but have more than I'll personally ever read." "Is that not a sign of a good library?" Miss Elizabeth replied. "To run out of something new to read would be far more unfortunate than having too many unread books.”

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Book:Pride and Prejudice in Space
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“People come to me for the solution of their problem, if my knowledge and experience is not enough to solve the problem, I go to my library read the relevant book and provide the solution.”

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Author:Amit Kalantri
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“What my aunt wanted to try was to create the Night Library. Through all of her studies of art, she'd discovered the importance of preserving this thing known as the past. "You know, it's presumptuous to think that the present is more advanced than the past," she said. "Putting aside industry, science, and chemistry, there hasn't been any progress in the arts, or literature." She told me this while she stood in front of the statue David in the Accademia Gallery. "Probably we can't produce magnificent things like this nowadays. Apart from reproductions and such." "Hmm." "Which is why I'd like to take the past and seal it in.”

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Book:Dinner at the Night Library
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“Every day, librarians enforce copyright policies that we may disagree with and that, in some ways, run contrary to the values of our profession. Every day, librarians must decide between a desire to preserve the privacy of our community members and offering services our communities demand. Every day, librarians must make a choice between doing what’s easy, doing what’s right, and determining what’s right in the first place. No textbook or mission statement or policy document can relieve us of the necessity to make those decisions, nor remove the complexity of those decisions. That’s why we are librarians and why librarians are professionals, not clerks. That’s why we are stewards within the communities we serve, not servants to them. That’s why we must shape the missions and the work of our organizations and communities, and not simply accept them.”

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Book:The New Librarianship Field Guide
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“«M'inganneranno, forse, la vecchiezza e il timore ma sospetto che la specie umana - l'unica - stia per estinguersi, e che la Bibioteca perdurerà: illuminata, solitaria, infinita, perfettamente immobile, armata di volumi preziosi, inutile, incorruttibile, segreta. Aggiungo: infinita. Non introduco quest'aggettivo per un'abitudine retorica; dico che non è illogico pensare che il mondo sia infinito. Chi lo giudica limitato, suppone che in qualche luogo remoto i corridoi e le scale e gli esagoni possano inconcepibilmente cessare; ciò che è assurdo. Chi lo immagina senza limiti, dimentica che è limitato il numero possibile dei libri. Io m'arrischio a insinuare questa soluzione: La Biblioteca è illimitata e periodica. Se un eterno viaggiatore la traversasse in una direzione qualsiasi, constaterebbe alla fine dei secoli che gli stessi volumi si ripetono nello stesso disordine (che, ripetuto, sarebbe un ordine: l'Ordine). Questa elegante speranza rallegra la mia solitudine.» [La Biblioteca di Babele]”

LibraryBorgesBabelBibliotecaFictionsFiccionesFinzioniBabele
Book:Fictions/Ficciones
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“He escrito alguna vez que una biblioteca no es un almacén de libros leídos, sino una herramienta, un refugio y un proyecto de vida. Contiene lo que te educó e incluso cambió el carácter, lo que ayuda a comprender el mundo, lo que consuela y protege, lo que entretiene o divierte, lo que aún esperas conocer si vives para que ocurra. Causa melancolía, cuando llegas a una edad, comprender que muchos de esos libros que tienes cerca, que te acompañan a la espera de su oportunidad, quizá no llegues a leerlos nunca. Pero son las reglas. Lo importante es que estén ahí, arropándote como amigos a los que recurrir en caso necesario.”

LibraryBiblioteca
Author:Arturo Pérez-Reverte
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“Una biblioteca pública debe ser felizmente esquizofrénica, y de hecho el de sus anaqueles puede ser el único lugar donde psicosis esquizoide y felicidad puedan unirse sin caer en el oxímoron. En ella debe haber lugar para todas las tendencias y temas, para cualquier afecto y desafecto, para todas las ideologías, creencias y credos, para cualquier imaginación literaria, artística, técnica, científica o procedente de las ciencias sociales. Cuanto más rica y variada, más exacta. Aquí hallamos otra hermosa contradicción: una biblioteca pública es más precisa y coherente como biblioteca cuanto más heterogénea y variopinta sea.”

LibraryBiblioteca
Book:Construir lectores (Cardinales nº 26)
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“Her eyes opened at the touch of light. It was slanting light, golden and shimmering with dust, the kind that filtered through the forests on Hy-Brasil in the late afternoon. And yet when she stepped forward, she found she was no longer amid the trees but inside, at the center of a circular tower that extended up for as far as her eyes could stretch. The walls were the white of polished marble, and the floor beneath her feet was polished wood partially covered by a thick red rug. There was a fireplace with two worn armchairs, and a desk fitted to the curve of the room and strewn with papers. Everything else, every inch of towering wall, was filled with bookshelves. They went all the way up to the high ceiling, at least seven stories, connected by ladders and balconies and ledges. The place had the old-paper smell of Rowan's study at the castle. Biddy stared, barely noticing as Hutchincroft jumped from her arms. "It's a library," she said out loud, in wonder. "It's a library inside a tree.”

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Book:The Magician’s Daughter
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“1. BUSCA UN BUEN ESCONDITE. Recuerda que deberás pasar oculto el resto de tu vida, así que elige un sitio alejado, peligroso, inaccesible para los demás, pero no olvides que sea cómodo y que haya una fuente de alimento cerca. Se recomiendan lugares solitarios como estanques con insectos, tiraderos de basura o bibliotecas escolares, en fin, deja volar tu imaginación.”

LibraryFantasmasBibliotecas
Book:Fantasmas, espectros y otros trapos sucios
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“Found in trees. Sometimes also in old silent movie theaters, seaside zoos, magic shops, hat shops, time-travel shops, topiary gardents, cowboy boots, castle turrets, comet museums, dog pounds, mermaid ponds, dragon lairs, library stacks (the ones in the back), piles of leaves, piles of pancakes, the belly of a fiddle, the bell of a flower, or in the company of wild herds of typewriters. But mostly in trees.”

BooksFlowerLibraryTreesDogsTypewritersZoosPancakesFiddleLeavesSilent MoviesBellSeasideTheatersDragon LairsMagic ShopsCastle TurrentsComet MuseumsCowboy BootsHat ShopsMermaid PondsTime Travel ShopsTopiary Gardents
Book:Confessions of an Imaginary Friend
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“Sterling Memorial, the main library at Yale, had been built to resemble a Gothic cathedral, replete with stained glass, carved stonework, and a crenellated tower. Completed in 1930, the structure was "as near to modern Gothic as we dared" according to its architect, James Gamble Rogers. The use of the word "dare" always intrigued me. It suggested boundaries and infractions. There was, as I had come to expect at Yale, a scandalous story attached to the library's design. The benefactress, an old woman with failing eyesight, wanted a place of worship, and Yale wanted a library. Flouting its own motto, Lux et Veritas, Yale presented her with a structural trompe l'oeil. A cathedral in its outlines, but in its details a pantheon to books, where King Lear was a demigod and Huckleberry Finn a mischievous angel. The visual world had already become a greasy smudge to the benefactress, so the old biddy died never knowing the difference. Light and Truth, indeed.”

LibraryArchitectureGothicYaleFictionalCathedralLight And Truth
Book:Bitter in the Mouth
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“Harriet, to hide her excitement, had turned to the bookshelves in the corner between the windows and the fireplace. The books, untidily arranged, some standing, some piled on their sides, with newspapers and magazines wedged among them, confused her. There were no sets and a great many were paper-backed. She saw friends - Mr. Dickens was present — and nodding acquaintances - Laurence Sterne, for instance, and Theodore Dreiser — but they were among strangers: Henry Miller, Norman Douglas, Saki, Ronald Firbank, strangers all.”

LibraryCharles DickensHenry MillerBookshelfLaurence SterneSakiNorman DouglasRonald FirbankTheodore Dreiser
Book:Table For Four
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“We find the library world, like the real world, impossible to understand on a rational basis. We turn then to the outer reaches of our mind and treat librarianship with the irrationality that it deserves. While we most often turn to humour merely to enjoy ourselves, we do sometimes do so to make a point. That point is simply that the world of librarianship is ridiculous and that we should all take a far less serious view of our work. What we accomplish as librarians is not, after all, likely to change the world." ~ Norman D. Stevens”

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Book:Archives of Library Research From the Molesworth Institute
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“The Red Hill was referred to in the most ancient surviving work of Tamil literature, the Tolkappiyam, which itself makes reference to an even earlier work now lost to history which in turn had supposedly been part of a library of archaic texts, all now also vanished, the compilation of which was said to have begun more than 10,000 years previously. This had been the library of the legendary First Sangam -- or 'Academy' -- of the lost Tamil civilization of Kumari Kandam, swallowed up, as Captain Narayan put it, 'by a major eruption of the sea'.”

LibraryDeep Human HistoryCataclysmTamilIce Age CivilizationsKumari Kandam
Book:Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization
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“The visitor enters and says, "What a lot of books! Have you read them all?" ...The best answer is the one always used by Roberto Leydi: "And more, dear sir, many more," which freezes the adversary and plunges him into a state of awed admiration. But I find it merciless and angst-generating. Now I have fallen back on the riposte: "No, these are the ones I have to read by the end of the month. I keep the others in my office.”

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Author:Umberto Eco
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“Desperate to hide himself away, he quickly grabbed a book, any book at all, from the shelf. "The Highway Code and Theory Test for Car Drivers". Well, he certainly hadn't been looking for that. It wasn't even a novel, though it might come in handy for his granddaughter Priya's driving theory test in six years' time. Reluctant to admit defeat, determined to pretend he didn't need the librarian's guidance anyway, he sat down at a table and started to read: "Introduction: The Highway Code is essential reading for everyone." "Oh, Naina," he said, out loud. "What am I doing here?" Someone, hidden away in the corner, sushed him quite aggressively and his head jumped up in fright. How long did he need to wait here for it not to look as though he'd made a silly mistake? It was obvious he wouldn't be taking a driving test any time soon!”

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Book:The Reading List
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