The Library Book Quotes

“Great writers, I discovered, were not to be bowed down before and worshipped, but embraced and befriended. Their names resounded through history not because they had massive brows and thought deep incomprehensible thoughts, but because they opened windows in the mind, they put their arms round you and showed you things you always knew but never dared to believe. Even if their names were terrifyingly foreign and intellectual sounding, Dostoevsky, Baudelaire or Cavafy, they turned out to be charming and wonderful and quite unalarming after all.”
― Stephen Fry, The Library Book

“The librarian isn't a clerk who happens to work in a library. A librarian is a data hound, a guide, a sherpa and a teacher. The librarian is the interface between reams of data and the untrained but motivated user.”
― Seth Godin, The Library Book

“Rather than the grey and dreary institutions of public perception, these should be places of innovation and experiment, where readers can take a chance on a book, pick one because they like the look of the cover or the title or because they see it returned by the gorgeous young man who lives in their street. After all, they will have absolutely nothing to lose. The book will be free.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Library Book

“The library became the cathedral where I would come to worship amd the stories were as precious to me as prayers.”
― Anita Anand, The Library Book

“You can tell a lot about people from the kind of books they steal.”
― Bella Bathurst, The Library Book

“A bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes; a personality is stamped on a library just as a shoe is shaped by the foot.”
― Alan Bennett, The Library Book

“To reduce a library to simple architecture, bricks and mortar is a mistake. Similarly, to suggest a library is defined by the books on the shelf is erroneous. Libraries are very special spaces, spaces where people come together in separate but joint pursuits of knowledge, of learning. Libraries are the heartbeats of communities.”
― Hardeep Singh Kohli, The Library Book

“The great unsold truth of libraries is that people need them not because they’re about study and solitude, but because they’re about connection. Connection with other worlds and different views, even if that’s no more than being among other people thinking and breathing.”
― Bella Bathurst, The Library Book

“Librarians who are arguing and lobbying for clever ebook lending solutions are completely missing the point. They are defending library as warehouse as opposed to fighting for the future, which is librarian as producer, concierge, connector, teacher and impresario.”
― Alan Bennett, The Library Book

“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.”
― Alan Bennett, The Library Book

“For a child a library needs to be round the corner. And if we lose local libraries it is children who will suffer.”
― Alan Bennett, The Library Book

“Libraries are very special spaces, spaces where people come together in separate but joint pursuits of knowledge, of learning. Libraries are the heartbeats of communities.”
― Alan Bennett, The Library Book

“The next library is a place, still. A place where people come together to do co-working and coordinate and invent projects worth working on together. Aided by a librarian who can bring domain knowledge and people knowledge and access to information to bear.”
― Alan Bennett, The Library Book

“it is seldom at the frontier that discoveries are made but more often in the dustbin.”
― Alan Bennett, The Library Book

“What people want to read often seems incongruous. A pair of biker-types taking away Thoughts of the Dalai Lama. People without access to instruments requesting sheet music. Aspiring poets sharing their work and then borrowing horror stories.”
― Alan Bennett, The Library Book

“In a library, on the other hand, that book is only a starting point. That book is surrounded by books on a similar subject – books that I didn’t know about. You pick them up, flick through them, and find treasures – and wisdom – you would never otherwise have found.”
― Rebecca Gray, The Library Book

“A bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes; a personality is stamped on a library just as a shoe is shaped by the foot.”
― Rebecca Gray, The Library Book

“Like millions of British people, we paid our taxes in the hope that they would be used to establish shared institutions from which all might benefit equally.”
― Zadie Smith, The Library Book

“Kids who read become students who do well in school. Students who do well in school go to college. College students graduate to good jobs and pay higher taxes. Libraries don’t service only left-wingers or right. They don’t judge by class, race or religion. They service everyone in their community, no matter their circumstances. Rich or poor; no one is denied. Libraries are not simply part of our guarantee to the pursuit of happiness. They are a civil right. If we lose our libraries, we risk losing our communities, our families and ourselves.”
― Alan Bennett, The Library Book

“I think the need for reading boils down to one simple issue: children are selfish. Reading about other people creates a sense of balance in a child’s life. It gives them the knowledge that there is a world outside themselves. It tells them that the language they are learning at home is the key to unlocking the mysteries of the greater world.”
― Alan Bennett, The Library Book

“It was almost a side-effect that this caused me to educate myself to a degree which was beyond anything a school could hope to achieve. My own appetite for knowledge and reading and connection had led me, and that is how education works, not by spoon-feeding, but by stimulating the appetite so that children cannot wait to feed themselves.”
― Alan Bennett, The Library Book

“Books and stories are lifelines, and libraries house those lifelines, making them available to all. They are important not just for the books, but for the space and freedom they provide, as well as the navigation and advice provided by librarians.”
― Alan Bennett, The Library Book

“To reduce a library to simple architecture, bricks and mortar is a mistake. Similarly, to suggest a library is defined by the books on the shelf is erroneous.”
― Alan Bennett, The Library Book