"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."
"Unpacking books is a revelatory activity."
"But at night, when the library lamps are lit, the outside world disappears and nothing but the space of books remains in existence."
"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."
"In my fool hardy youth, when my friends were dreaming of heroic deeds in the realms of engineering and law, finance and national politics, I dreamt of becoming a librarian."
"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."