It__ remarkable that a device, which fits in your pocket, can hold thousands of books. But a room full of books is an entirely different kind of remarkable.

Each big idea like that is an operating system upgrade," she says, smiling. Comfortable territory. "Writers are responsible for some of it. They say Shakespeare invented the internal monologue."Oh, I am very familiar with the internal monologue."But I think the writers had their turn," she says, "and now it's programmers who get to upgrade the human operating system."I am definitely talking to a girl from Google. "So what's the next upgrade?""It's already happening," she says. "There are all these things you can do, and it's like you're in more than one place at one time, and it's totally normal. I mean, look around."I swivel my head, and I see what she wants me to see: dozens of people sitting at tiny tables, all learning into phones showing them places that don't exist and yet are somehow more interesting...

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.

Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method._ Walter Benjamin, "Unpacking My Library

Deserted libraries hold the shades of writers who worked within, and are haunted by their absence.

An ordinary man can surround himself with two thousand books and thenceforward have at least one place in the world in which it is always possible to be happy.