The Bookseller's Tale Quotes

“I have seen this in thirty years of bookselling: customers stroking a book’s cover, peeking under the jacket, surreptitiously closing their eyes to smell the valley of pages - this sometimes accompanied by a quiet moan of pleasure- hugging it after purchase, and even giving it a little kiss.”
― Martin Latham, The Bookseller's Tale

“When one realizes the tremendous evolution of one's being which occurs in a lifetime one is bound to ask: ...did I learn my lesson here on earth?”
― Martin Latham, The Bookseller's Tale

“Nothing lasts. Our frail idea of self morphs and shape-shifts, then becomes a line on a death certificate and a few family anecdotes. (...) What if the layers of societal self were burnt away, could some idea of our individuality live on in a book, if that book was written in, even cut and pasted with thoughts and cuttings?”
― Martin Latham, The Bookseller's Tale

“I have found time and time again that people's childhood comfort book prefigures, to an almost comical degree which they cannot always see, their adult mission in life.”
― Martin Latham, The Bookseller's Tale

“Gli uomini erano letteralmente terrorizzati - e non sto esagerando - dalla possibilità che le donne potessero trarre dai libri una gratificazione sessuale, oppure un'emancipazione politica o spirituale. Tuttavia la minaccia più grande era probabilmente l'istruzione che potevano conquistare. Il ragionamento è cristallino: più letture uguale meno lavori domestici e meno devozione nei confronti dei mariti come depositari di saggezza e gratificazione.”
― Martin Latham, The Bookseller's Tale

“Where do we go in dreams if not to a universal library? Such a infinite library would be brain-lik, characterised by labyrinthine passages where firing synapses distantly crackle, mythic beings appear and vanish, all is limitless but obscurely connected: Pan’s Labyrinth meets The Master and Margarita.”
― Martin Latham, The Bookseller's Tale

“When one realizes the tremendous evolution of one's being which occurs in a lifetime one is bound to as: ...did I learn my lesson here on earth?”
― Martin Latham, The Bookseller's Tale