The Library at Night Quotes

“In my fool hardy youth, when my friends were dreaming of heroic deeds in the realms of engineering and law, finance and national politics, I dreamt of becoming a librarian. ”
― Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night

“We can imagine the books we'd like to read, even if they have not yet been written, and we can imagine libraries full of books we would like to possess, even if they are well beyond our reacher, because we enjoy dreaming up a library that reflects every one of our interests and every one of our foibles--a library that, in its variety and complexity, fully reflects the reader we are.”
― Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night

“أثناء النهار ، أكتب ، وأنتقل بين الكتب متصفحا ، معيدا ترتيبها ، أفسح للحديث منها مكانا ، وأعيد تشكيل الاقسام لتوفير حيز جديد. الكتب الجديدة الوافدة يرحب بها بعد فترة من الفحص. إذا كان الكتاب مستعملا ، أدع كل الإشارات التي دونت عليه على حالها ، الآثار التي يتركها القارئ السابق: رفاق السفر الذين سجلوا مرورهم بالتعليقات المخربشة ، اسم ما على الصفحة البيضاء الفارغة في بداية ونهاية الكتاب ، بطاقة قطار لتأشير صفحة معينة. سواء كانت قديمة أو جديدة ، الإشارة الوحيدة التي أناضل لإزالتها من كتبي (وغالبا دون نجاح يذكر) هي لصقة السعر التي يضعها بائعو الكتب الحقودين على ظهر الكتاب. هذه الدملة الشيطانية الصغيرة التي لا تستأصل بسهولة ، فهي تخلف ندوبا مجذومة وآثارا من مادة لزجة يلتصق بها الغبار والزغب بعد فترة من الزمن ، تجعلني أتمنى لو كان لدي ممسحة جهنمية أحكم بها على هؤلاء الذين اخترعوا هذه اللصقات.”
― Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night

“Ultimately, the number of books always exceeds the space they are granted. ”
― Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night

“In the light, we read the inventions of others; in the darkness we invent our own stories. ”
― Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night

“I like to imagine that, on the day after my last, my library and I will crumble together, so that even when I am no more I'll still be with my books.”
― Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night

“The love of libraries, like most loves, must be learned. ”
― Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night

“My books hold between their covers every story I've ever known and still remember, or have now forgotten, or may one day read; they fill the space around me with ancient and new voices. ”
― Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night

“Every reader exists to ensure for a certain book a modest immortality. Reading is, in this sense, a ritual of rebirth.”
― Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night

“Our society accepts the book as a given, but the act of reading -- once considered useful and important, as well as potentially dangerous and subversive -- is now condescendingly accepted as a pastime, a slow pastime that lacks efficiency and does not contribute to the common good.”
― Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night

“I have no feelings of guilt regarding the books I have not read and perhaps will never read; I know that my books have unlimited patience. They will wait for me till the end of my days.”
― Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night

“Unpacking books is a revelatory activity. ”
― Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night

“But at night, when the library lamps are lit, the outside world disappears and nothing but the space of books remains in existence. ”
― Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night

“Readers, censors know, are defined by the books they read.”
― Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night

“Old books that we have known but not possessed cross our path and invite themselves over. New books try to seduce us daily with tempting titles and tantalizing covers. ”
― Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night

“In a library, no empty shelf remains empty for long.”
― Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night

“If every library is in some sense a reflection of its readers, it is also an image of that which we are not, and cannot be.”
― Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night

“Digestion of words as well; I often read aloud to myself in my writing corner in the library, where no one can hear me, for the sake of better savouring the text, so as to make it all the more mine.”
― Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night

“But a reader's ambition knows no bounds.”
― Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night

“It hardly matters why a library is destroyed: every banning, curtailment, shredding, plunder or loot gives rise (at least as a ghostly presence) to a louder, clearer, more durable library of the banned, looted, plundered, shredded or curtailed.”
― Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night

“In the dark, with the windows lit and the rows of books glittering, the library is a closed space, a universe of self-serving rules that pretend to replace or translate those of the shapeless universe beyond. ”
― Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night

“One book calls to another unexpectedly, creating alliances across different cultures and centuries. ”
― Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night

“At night, here in the library, the ghosts have voices.”
― Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night

“We are losing our common vocabulary, built over thousands of years to help and delight and instruct us, for the sake of what we take to be the new technology's virtues. ”
― Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night

“The starting point is a question.”
― Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night

“Evil requires no reason.”
― Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night

“Darkness promotes speech.”
― Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night

“From fire, water, the passage of time, neglectful readers, and the hand of the censor, each of my books has escaped to tell me its story.”
― Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night

“Libraries, whether my own or shared with a greater reading public, have always seemed to me pleasantly mad places, and for as long as I can remember I've been seduced by their labyrinthine logic, which suggests that reason (if not art) rules over a cacophonous arrangement of books.”
― Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night

“A library is an ever-growing entity; it multiples seemingly unaided, it reproduces itself by purchase, theft, borrowings, gifts, by suggesting gaps through association, by demanding completion of sorts.”
― Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night