The library smells like old books — a thousand leather doorways into other worlds. I hear silence, like the mind of God. I feel a presence in the empty chair beside me. The librarian watches me suspiciously. But the library is a sacred place, and I...
Want to inspire your kids to read more? Try giving them kids some money to spend just on a book. Take them to a bookstore and let them browse and pick out one book that they will love. Or try going to a local library for a few hours and just let your...
The book was not new. Dates were stamped on the front endpaper, in and out dates. A rent book. A lending library of elaborate smut. I rewrapped the book and locked it up behind the seat. A racket like that, out in the open on the boulevard, seemed to...
The title of the work, its place in the collective library, the nature of the person who tells us about it, the atmosphere established in the written or spoken exhange, among many other instances, offer alternatives to the book itself that allow us t...
Though I loved the wired world, the new-wave librarians, the avatars and activists, I turned into a dinosaur in that library. I couldn’t help it; I was an old-fashioned writer who loved the ancient books summoned via pneumatic tubes, the archives, ...
Whatever you call me, my parents encouraged me to go to college and become a book lover, and to trust that I could do nearly anything if I could find the right book at the library. It was true; books had saved me in my home remodeling projects, but t...
To build up a library is to create a life. It's never just a random collection of books.
I took up a sort of a hobby of just hanging around the local library. I'd pick out an author and I would read all their books.
Collect books, even if you don't plan on reading them right away. Nothing is more important than an unread library.
Digital books and other texts are increasingly coming under the control of distributors and other gatekeepers rather than readers and libraries.
I have said repeatedly that in this country we track library books better than we do sex offenders.
If you're frightened of the countless number of books in the library, you'll never write anything, until you close your eyes and hold the pen.
The most inspiring objects are books. I have about 5,000 volumes in my home library. It's an unending source of visuals and ideas.
Immigrants use the library often. A lot of them don't have access to books and Internet at home. They seem so disconnected to the city.
Libraries are brothels for the mind. Which means that librarians are the madams, greeting punters, understanding their strange tastes and needs, and pimping their books.
You will find that your library in Heaven contains only some of the books you had on Earth, the ones you gave away or lent.
I was a library rat and a bookworm. I read all the time. I walked to school reading books. I read under my desk.
It is an awfully sad misconception that librarians simply check books in and out. The library is the heart of a school, and without a librarian, it is but an empty shell.
In my library/study/barn, there is a Ping-Pong table on which I can pile working books and spread maps.
The books we love offer a sketch of a whole universe that we secretly inhabit, and in which we desire the other person to assume a role. One of the conditions of happy romantic compatibility is, if not to have read the same books, to have read at lea...
Suppose each of us make up a list of, say, fifty or more books that we believe should be in the library. Then , when Robinson goes to the bookseller in Philadelphia let him start with the first of each of our chooses, then the second of each, and so ...
