Fourteen is the age when time first starts to make its presence felt. Time took on such a variety of hues in those days that even my frozen mind sometimes reflected the colours of the...

It’s remarkable that a device, which fits in your pocket, can hold thousands of books. But a room full of books is an entirely different kind of remarkable.

My two favourite things in life are libraries and bicycles. They both move people forward without wasting anything. The perfect day: riding a bike to the library.

There’s something deep in the heart of every person that wantsto protect culture. The only thing about my pending career thatwas changed because of 9/11 was that I began to see it was the community,not...

To be great at something, you must look to the great ones of thepast and improve on the ideas and techniques that they started. Iwas motivated to do better—to improve on the ideas of others.

They have schools for librarians? Do they teach you how to properly sssh people?

We don’t have to destroy the library of the past. We just need to give it a face-lift.

A library was nothing without its people. You say library and there’s this iconoclastic image of an old-lady librarian telling people to be quiet and not to run. But the thing was, that lady—that iconoclastic...

It took a bit of popcorn and a library snack bar to make me realize that being a librarian was about more than just giving people information. It was about serving a community. And if...

I like to imagine that library school was started because of some sort of silly bar bet where a guy got really plastered and told his buddy that he could convince people that librarians needed...

The loudest elderly women always had the quietest elderly husbands.

…killing rats wasn’t in my job description.

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

A library is a hospital for the mind.

Libraries can in general be too narrow or too wide for the soul.

My stomach is rather content, now that I think about it. ‘Tis my mind that is starving.

Libraries are the future of reading. When the economy is down, we need to make it easier for people to buy and read books for free, not harder. It is stupid to sacrifice tomorrow’s book...

In the library I felt better, words you could trust and look at till you understood them, they couldn’t change half way through a sentence like people, so it was easier to spot a lie.

I was under the librarians’ protection. Civil servants and servants of civility, they had my back. They would be whatever they needed to be that day: information professionals, teachers, police, community organizers, computer technicians, historians,...

Books are only half our job ; the other half is human nature.

Library. It’s where we lock up all those books before they start giving kids ideas,” I said solemnly. “Very dangerous place to be.

When rivers flooded, when fire fell from the sky, what a fine place the library was, the many rooms, the books. With luck, no one found you. How could they!–when you were off to Tanganyika...

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.

Libraries are not made; they grow. Good as it is to inherit a library, it is better to collect one.

Because that’s what Hermione does,’ said Ron, shrugging. ‘When in doubt, go to the library.

Overall, the library held a hushed exultation, as though the cherished volumes were all singing soundlessly within their covers.

A little library, growing larger every year, is an honourable part of a man’s history. It is a man’s duty to have books. A library is not a luxury, but one of the necessaries of...

Some people would say it’s a bad idea to bring a fire-spider into a public library. Those people would probably be right, but it was better than leaving him alone in the house for nine...

Sam hauled open the library door.”There you are!” Whit pushed up from the desk he’d been hunched over. “We thought you two had given up on us.””Unlike some people I know,” I said, removing my...

I always say, ‘Books beat boredom,’ said Amanda wisely.

Public libraries are the sole community centers left in America. The degree to which a branch of the local library is connected to the larger culture is a reflection of the degree to which the...

In the wide pile, by others heeded not,Hers was one sacred solitary spot,Whose gloomy aisles and bending shelves containFor moral hunger food, and cures for moral pain.

I’m a library user and I just don’t hoard books. To me, they’re for sharing.

A library is such a potent symbol of a town’s values: each one closed down might as well be six thousand stickers plastered over every available surface, reading “WE CHOSE TO BECOME MORE STUPID AND...

That perfect tranquility of life, which is nowhere to be found but in retreat, a faithful friend and a good library.

Is that what those were?” Gerry blithely replied.

There’s a vast fraternity of record collectors, and the record store was their hub. There was not a lot of information on these groups or the labels so you’d gather [there] and it would be...

I had a dream about you. We were two lovers disguised as librarians. We met in the non-fiction section, and that’s the truth. Or at least that’s what we told your parents. They didn’t need...

Spray a book with insect spray, drop it in a bag, add some mothballs and seal it. Put it in another bag and seal it. Another. The packages piled up on the floor, each a...

My grandma always said that God made libraries so that people didn’t have any excuse to be stupid.

Every library should try to complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads.

Some people write letters, in the library.

INTERVIEWERYou’re self-educated, aren’t you?BRADBURYYes, I am. I’m completely library educated. I’ve never been to college. I went down to the library when I was in grade school in Waukegan, and in high school in Los...

The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future of man

he’ll expect to find us exactly where he left us, never mind how much his life has changed in the meantime.

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...

Isabel is looking at several collections of research journals. ‘She would understand the issues if she chose to open one of the volumes, but she knew that there were conversations within which she would never...

They spent pork-barrel money like a tidal-wave sea, but no funds trickled down far enough to reach me. Our books numbered few and were falling apart, and I sat mending pages with a crestfallen heart.

I stubbed my toe just as someone dropped a book into the inside drop box. As I yelped and howled in pain, a child on the other side said, ‘Mommy, I think we hurt the...

The library made me feel safe, as if every question had an answer and there was nothing to be afraid of, as long as I could sort through another volume.