The Library Book

by Susan Orlean

Heinrich Heine’s warning: “There where one burns books, one in the end burns men.”

“Well, my hero is Albert Schweitzer. He said, ‘All true living takes place face to face.’

Writing documents the process of traveling from birth to death, from innocence to wisdom, from ignorance to knowledge, from where we start to where we end.

any life closely examined is complex and exceptional and can embody both the heroic and the plain.

The thing that makes writing so challenging is not knowing how to summon that miracle.