library

My mom used to tell me that the most valuable thing she owned was her library card. We were poor, but that's not what she was talking about. My mom knew that education opened doors and opened minds.

I remember that I used to get lots of books from the library, and 'Little Women' was one of them. And I used to just cross out the parts of it that really upset me because it's such a sad book in so many ways. I'd cross out the parts that upset me, and I would rewrite new endings.

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.

For those without money, the road to that treasure house of the imagination begins at the public library.

When I started the Imagination Library in my hometown, I never dreamed that one day we would be helping Scottish kids.

If truth is beauty, how come no one has their hair done in the library?

A library implies an act of faith.

I have an extensive library - every birthday when I was a kid my parents would ask what movie or book I wanted, so I have built up a big collection over the years.

Every night, I was read to. Every Friday, we were taken to the library. I always received at least one book for my birthday. I have a few of them yet. Early on, I had my own collection of books. I loved to read. Still do.

When I turned 35, I thought, 'Mozart was dead at 36, so I set the bar: I'm going to start writing a book on my next birthday.' I thought historical fiction would be easiest because I was a university professor and know my way around a library, and it seemed easier to look things up than make them up.

I like to engage the public because when I was in high school, I had all these questions about anti-matter, higher dimensions and time travel. Every time I went to the library, every time I asked people these questions, I would get some strange looks. Nobody could answer any of these questions.

In my opinion, right up there with free public schools, our free public library system is what makes citizenship possible, even what makes America great.

I write about all manner of things: a guy fighting aliens in the New York State Library, Antarctica, Inca civilization in Peru, the Great Pyramid at Giza, and people often ask me, where do I get these ideas from? They come from reading widely, watching a lot of documentaries, and increasingly ,as I was able to, travelling around the world.

I never imagined I'd go into acting, but I always loved drama, and when I was 16, I discovered the Library Theatre up the road. So I plucked up courage and asked if I could watch rehearsals. It was like Heaven.

Medical research in the twentieth century mostly takes place in the lab; in the Renaissance, though, researchers went first and foremost to the library to see what the ancients had said.

I've been quite fascinated by the relative insignificance of human existence, the shortness of life. We might as well be a letter in a word in a sentence on a page in a book in a library in a city in one country in this enormous universe! And that kind of fear and insignificance has kept me awake at night.

The library, with its Daedalian labyrinth, mysterious hush, and faintly ominous aroma of knowledge, has been replaced by the computer's cheap glow, pesky chirp, and data spillage.

As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.