Alberto Manguel Quotes About Libraries

Quotes about: Libraries

• 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

  Art, Book, Reading

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.9, Vintage Canada

• The love of libraries, like most loves, must be learned.

  Alberto Manguel

  Book, Reading, Thought Provoking

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.9, Vintage Canada

• The shelves of books we haven't written, like those of books we haven't read, stretches out into the darkness of the universal library's farthest space. We are always at the beginning of the beginning of the letter A.

  Alberto Manguel

  Book, Space, Darkness

  "A History of Reading". Book by Alberto Manguel, 1996.

• At night, here in the library, the ghosts have voices.

  Alberto Manguel

  Night, Voice, Library

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.19, Vintage Canada

• 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

  Reflection, Library, Reader

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.106, Vintage Canada

• In a library, no empty shelf remains empty for long.

  Alberto Manguel

  Long, Library, Empty

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.66, Vintage Canada

• 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

  Dream, Book, Library

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.273, Vintage Canada

• 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

  Book, Library, Together

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.39, Vintage Canada

• 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

  Book, Night, Space

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.17, Vintage Canada

• Entering a library, I am always stuck by the way in which a certain vision of the world is imposed upon the reader through its categories and its order.

  Alberto Manguel

  Order, Vision, Library

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.48, Vintage Canada

• 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

  Writing, Library, Sake

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.169, Vintage Canada

• 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

  Book, Dark, Space

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.17, Vintage Canada

• 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

  Giving, Library, Matter

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.121, Vintage Canada

• 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

  Library, Gaps, Growing

• Deserted libraries hold the shades of writers who worked within, and are haunted by their absence.

  Alberto Manguel

  Library, Shade, Absence

• If the library in the morning suggests an echo of the severe and reasonable wishful order of the world, the library at night seems to rejoice in the world's essential, joyful muddle.

  Alberto Manguel

  Morning, Night, Order

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.19, Vintage Canada

• It has always been my experience that, whatever groupings I choose for my books, the space in which I plan to lodge them necessarily reshapes my choice and, more important, in no time proves too small for them and forces me to change my arrangement. In a library, no empty shelf remains empty for long. Like Nature, libraries abhor a vacuum, and the problem of space is inherent in the very nature of any collection of books.

  Alberto Manguel

  Book, Space, Long

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.65, Vintage Canada

• During the day, the library is a realm of order.

  Alberto Manguel

  Order, Library, Realms

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.17, Vintage Canada

• We can roam the bloated stacks of the Library of Alexandria, where all imagination and knowledge are assembled; we can recognize in its destruction the warning that all we gather will be lost, but also that much of it can be collected again; we can learn from its splendid ambition that what was one man's experience can become, through the alchemy of words, the experience of all, and how that experience, distilled once again into words, can serve each singular reader for some secret, singular purpose.

  Alberto Manguel

  Ambition, Men, Imagination

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.36, Vintage Canada

• Books read in a public library never have the same flavour as books read in the attic or the kitchen.

  Alberto Manguel

  Book, Kitchen, Library

  "A History of Reading". Book by Alberto Manguel, 1996.

• Every library is a library of preferences, and every chosen category implies an exclusion.

  Alberto Manguel

  Library, Exclusion, Preference

  "A History of Reading". Book by Alberto Manguel, 1996.

• Existing libraries, in their very being, seem to question the authority of those in power.

  Alberto Manguel

  Library, Authority, Seems

• At night, here in the library, the ghosts have voices.... The various qualities of my readings seem to permeate my every muscle, so that when I finally decide to turn off the library light, I carry into my sleep the voices and the movements of the book I've just closed.

  Alberto Manguel

  Book, Reading, Sleep

• If the Library of Alexandria was the emblem of our ambition of omniscience, the Web is the emblem of our ambition of omnipresence; the library that contained everything has become the library that contains anything.

  Alberto Manguel

  Ambition, Library, Alexandria

• Ordered by subject, by importance, ordered according to whether the book was penned by God or by one of God's creatures, ordered alphabetically or by numbers or by the language in which the text is written, every library translates the chaos of discovery and creation into a structured system of hierarchies or a rampage of free associations.

  Alberto Manguel

  Book, Discovery, Numbers

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.61, Vintage Canada

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