library

First paycheck I get, I thought, I'm going to get myself a room near the downtown L.A. Public Library.

What in the world would we do without our libraries?

During the day, the library is a realm of order.

The secret of a good librarian is that he never reads anything more of the literature in his charge than the title and the table of contents. Anyone who lets himself go and starts reading a book is lost as a librarian...He's bound to lose perspective.

Nothing is more impotent than an unread library.

Your library is your paradise.

...killing rats wasn__ in my job description.

When you are growing up there are two institutional places that affect you most powerfully: the church, which belongs to God, and the public library, which belongs to you.

Corliss wondered what happens to a book that sits unread on a library shelf for thirty years. Can a book rightfully be called a book if it never gets read?...'How many books never get checked out," Corliss asked the librarian. 'Most of them,' she said.Corliss never once considered the fate of library books. She loved books. How could she not worry about the unread? She felt like a disorganized scholar, an abusive mother, and a cowardly soldier.'Are you serious?' Corliss asked. 'What are we talking about here? If you were guessing, what is the percentage of books in this library that never get checked out?' 'We're talking sixty percent of them. Seriously. Maybe seventy percent. And I'm being optimistic. It's probably more like eighty or ninety percent. This isn't a library, it's an orphanage.'The librarian talked in a reverential whisper. Corliss knew she'd misjudged this passionate woman. Maybe she dressed poorly, but she was probably great in bed, certainly believed in God and goodness, and kept an illicit collection of overdue library books on her shelves.

The library is the worst group of people ever assembled in history. They're mean, conniving, rude, and extremely well-read, which makes them dangerous.

For him that stealeth, or borroweth and returneth not, this book from its owner, let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with palsy, and all his members blasted. Let him languish in pain, crying aloud for mercy, and let there be no surcease to this agony till he sing in dissolution. Let bookworms gnaw his entrails in token of the worm that dieth not, and when at last he goeth to his last punishment, let the flames of hell consume him for

A library after closing is a lonely place. It is heart-poundingly silent, and the rows of shelves create an almost unfathomable number of dark and creepy corners.

A library in the middle of a community is a cross between an emergency exit, a life-raft and a festival. They are cathedrals of the mind; hospitals of the soul; theme parks of the imagination. On a cold rainy island, they are the only sheltered public spaces where you are not a consumer, but a citizen instead

Now take my hand and hold it tight.I will not fail you here tonight,For failing you, I fail myselfAnd place my soul upon a shelfIn Hell's library without light.I will not fail you here tonight.

Public libraries are the sole community centers left in America. The degree to which a branch of the local library is connected to the larger culture is a reflection of the degree to which the community itself is connected to the larger culture.

Perhaps no place in any community is so totally democratic as the town library. The only entrance requirement is interest.

You can__ learn to write in college. It__ a very bad place for writers because the teachers always think they know more than you do__nd they don__. They have prejudices. They may like Henry James, but what if you don__ want to write like Henry James? They may like John Irving, for instance, who__ the bore of all time. A lot of the people whose work they__e taught in the schools for the last thirty years, I can__ understand why people read them and why they are taught. The library, on the other hand, has no biases. The information is all there for you to interpret. You don__ have someone telling you what to think. You discover it for yourself.

We don__ have to destroy the library of the past. We just need to give it a face-lift.