"Most people don't realize how important librarians are. I ran across a book recently which suggested that the peace and prosperity of a culture was solely related to how many librarians it contained. Possibly a slight overstatement. But a culture that doesn't value its librarians doesn't value ideas and without ideas, well, where are we?"
— Neil Gaiman

"Don't mark up the Library's copy, you fool! Librarians are Unprankable. They'll track you down! They have skills!"
— Charles Ogden

"Librarians, Dusty, possess a vast store of politeness. These are people who get asked regularly the dumbest questions on God's green earth. These people tolerate every kind of crank and eccentric and mouth breather there is."
— Garrison Keillor

"If she can't spell, why is she a librarian? Librarians should know how to spell."
— Beverly Cleary (Ramona's World)

"In the nonstop tsunami of global information, librarians provide us with floaties and teach us to swim."
— Linton Weeks

"Librarian is a service occupation. Gas station attendant of the mind."
— Richard Powers

"Of course it's alright for librarians to smell of drink."
— Barbara Pym

"When I tell people I went to library school, the most common reaction is either “You’re joking, right?” or “They have schools for librarians? Do they teach you how to properly sssh people?”"
— Scott Douglas

"It took a bit of popcorn and a library snack bar to make me realize that being a librarian was about more than just giving people information. It was about serving a community. And if the community is hungry for more than just knowledge, then maybe it’s about time to open a snack bar."
— Scott Douglas

"God bless the Reference Librarians"
— James Lee Burke

"To Homer, libraries were holy places like churches, and the priestly librarians a blessed race, a saving remnant in a world of sin. Whenever God grew impatient and decided to destroy the world he remembered the librarians and stayed his hand."
— Jane Langton

"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."
— Robert Musil (The Man Without Qualities)

"I like to imagine that library school was started because of some sort of silly bar bet where a guy got really plastered and told his buddy that he could convince people that librarians needed to be trained in the art of librarianship. Sadly, this is not the case; its roots are a bit more academic."
— Scott Douglas

"As it is she will probably turn out to be one of these acid-faced virgins that sit behind little desks in public libraries and stamp dates in books."
— Raymond Chandler

"The loudest elderly women always had the quietest elderly husbands."
— Scott Douglas

"We don’t have to
destroy the library of the past. We just need to give it a face-lift."
— Scott Douglas (Quiet, Please: Dispatches From A Public Librarian)

"The old man was peering intently at the shelves. 'I'll have to admit that he's a very competent scholar.'
'Isn't he just a librarian?' Garion asked, 'somebody who looks after books?'
'That's where all the rest of scholarship starts, Garion. All the books in the world won't help you if they're just piled up in a heap.'"
— David Eddings (King of the Murgos)

"I have always thought that librarians are a little bit like doctors, travel agents and professors all rolled into one. We all know that a great story can lift spirits, take you anywhere in the world you want to go and in any time period to boot, and the lessons you learn from a good book can buoy your own convictions and even change your life. "
— Dorothea Benton Frank

"A library was nothing without its people. You say library and there’s this iconoclastic image of an old-lady librarian telling people to be quiet and not to run. But the thing was, that lady—that iconoclastic lady—was with us when we cleaned. She wore blue jeans, too. Maybe she was what people thought about when you said library, but she didn’t make the library. People made the library. That’s what made a library. Without them, all the sacredness was gone. It was just a building with books."
— Scott Douglas

"Never argue with a librarian; they know too much."
— Carole Nelson Douglas (Cat in a Red Hot Rage)

"To be great at something, you must look to the great ones of the
past and improve on the ideas and techniques that they started. I
was motivated to do better—to improve on the ideas of others."
— Scott Douglas

"There’s something deep in the heart of every person that wants
to protect culture. The only thing about my pending career that
was changed because of 9/11 was that I began to see it was the community,
not the librarian, that was important to the library. Librarians
were only as important as the community they inspired. If I
was going to continue with this career, my job wouldn’t be to protect
information, it would be to bring the community together and
inspire them to appreciate everything a library stands for."
— Scott Douglas

"...killing rats wasn’t in my job description."
— Scott Douglas

"At least once a week, Dinsy was amused by the indignant sputtering of someone who had just spooned dill weed, not sugar, into a cup of Earl Grey tea."
— Ellen Klages

"In general, librarians enjoyed special requests. A reference librarian is someone who likes the chase. When librarians read for pleasure, they often pick a good mystery."
— Karen Joy Fowler

" "In fact a few simple mathematical calculations reveal that if reference librarians were paid at market rates for all the roles they play, they would have salaries well over $200,000." "
— Will Manley

"Now here's the heavy irony. So I went back to New York to become a librarian. To actually seek out this thing I've been fleeing all my life. and (here it comes): a librarian is just not that easy to become...Apparently there's a whole filing system and annotating system and stamping system and God knows what you have to learn before you qualify."
— Elaine Dundy (The Dud Avocado)

"Libraries are like houses of worship: Whether or not you use them yourself, it's important to know that they are there. In many ways they define a society and the values of that society. Librarians to me are the keepers of the flame of knowledge. When I was growing up, the librarian in my local library looked like a meek little old lady, but after you spent some time with her, you realized she was Athena with a sword, a wise and wonderful repository of wisdom."
— Jane Stanton Hitchcock

"[Librarians] are subversive. You think they're just sitting there at the desk, all quiet and everything. They're like plotting the revolution, man. I wouldn't mess with them."
— Michael Francis Moore

"My work is whatever I want it to be, and I report to no one regularly. The head librarian -- the man in charge of the University's entire collection -- is a figurehead, well-to-do and poorly read, with whom I have only perfunctory contact."
— Martha Cooley (The Archivist)

"Working with the public can be stressful, no matter in what profession or context, and reference librarians are not immune to the debilitating effect that such stress can have...They [reference librarians] can exercise regularly to dissipate job tensions and attend workshops and conferences to expand their professional contacts and exchange information and ideas."
— Charles A. Bunge and Richard E. Bopp