“Our society accepts the book as a given, but the act of reading -- once considered useful and important, as well as potentially dangerous and subversive -- is now condescendingly accepted as...”
Author detail
A Canadian Argentine-born writer, translator, and editor. **The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel** *Reviewed by Peter Ackroyd, The Times May 8, 2008* There is an old superstition that books, alone in the night and the silence, whisper one to another; the library then becomes an echo chamber of words and syllables, conjuring up the great general drama of the human spirit. Libraries are legendary places. Libraries enter myth as well as history. Lost libraries, like that of Alexandria, are a reminder of the transience of human achievement and of human learning. “No place,” Samuel Jonson said, “affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.” [Read the whole review][1] (PDF) [1]: http://www.atelieraldente.de/manguel_0h4/documents/Ackroyd%20The%20Library%20at%20Night.pdf
Quotes
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“Our society accepts the book as a given, but the act of reading -- once considered useful and important, as well as potentially dangerous and subversive -- is now condescendingly accepted as...”
“Old books that we have known but not possessed cross our path and invite themselves over. New books try to seduce us daily with tempting titles and tantalizing covers.”
“In a library, no empty shelf remains empty for long.”
“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 mo...”
“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...”
“I have no feelings of guilt regarding the books I have not read and perhaps will never read; I know that my books have unlimited patience. They will wait for me till the end of my days.”
“One book calls to another unexpectedly, creating alliances across different cultures and centuries.”
“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 shapeles...”
“There is a line of poetry, a sentence in a fable, a word in an essay, by which my existence is justified; find that line, and immortality is assured.”
“Life happened because I turned the pages.”
“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 completi...”
“From fire, water, the passage of time, neglectful readers, and the hand of the censor, each of my books has escaped to tell me its story.”
“In any of my pages in any of my books may life a perfect account of my secret experience of the world.”
“As readers, we have gone from learning a precious craft whose secret was held by a jealous few, to taking for granted a skin that has become subordinate to principles of mindless financial p...”
“We read to understand our intuition of the world, to discover that someone a thousand miles and years away has put into words our most intimate desires and our most secret fears. Readi...”
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“Every reader has found charms by which to secure possession of a page that, by magic, becomes as if never read before, fresh and immaculate.”
“No one stepping for the first time into a room made of books can know instinctively how to behave, what is expected, what is promised, what is allowed. One may be overcome by horror--at the...”
“Books have long been instruments of the divinatory arts.”
“And sometimes, when the stars are kind, we read with an intake of breath, with a shudder, as if someone or something had 'walked over our grave,' as if a memory had suddenly been rescued fro...”
“The books on my shelves do not know me until I open them, yet I am certain that they address me — me and every other reader — by name; they await our comments and opinions. I am presumed in...”