Jennifer Bairos

“The best guide I know to readerly judgment is our old friend Auden, who graciously summed up a lifetime of thinking about these matters in a single incisive sentence: “For an adult reader, the possible verdicts are five: I can see this is good and I like it; I can see this is good but I don’t like it; I can see this is good, and, though at present I don’t like it, I believe with perseverance I shall come to like it; I can see that this is trash but I like it; I can see that this is trash and I don’t like it.”
― Alan Jacobs, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction

“Libraries were full of ideas—perhaps the most dangerous and powerful of all weapons.”
― Sarah J. Maas, Throne of Glass

“Still, Temple has no illusions concerning her library's impact. Her books won't lift anyone from their low station. They won't right wrongs or save wandering souls from perdition or fill grumbling stomachs. But they might let a few scraps of sunlight fall into some lean, desolate lives. And that's something.

'The Greatest Library of Estevan, Saskatchewan”
― Michael Christie, Greenwood

“He never went out without a book under his arm, and he often came back with two.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables