“I lived in the royal library, among all the books."
"You resided in a… library?"
"Theresuites inside and great balconies that overlooked the city, but yes. I was most content among those shelves, so one night, I simply never left.”

“Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have lent me.”

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

“I used to write in the Rathmines public library. I was on the dole and living in a bedsit down the road. It was too cold to write at home. I had one of those meters that you had to put 50p into. So I'd go down the library every morning and after lunch to scribble stuff in longhand in the study room there.”

Philip Ó Ceallaigh (1968) Irish writer

“If I finish a book a week, I will read only a few thousand books in my lifetime, about a tenth of a percent of the contents of the greatest libraries of our time. The trick is to know which books to read.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

“OKAY. So I was going to the library every Saturday. So what? So what? It's not like I was reading books or anything.”

Gary D. Schmidt book Okay for Now

“Libraries, as spaces, need to continue to inspire the public to dream big and to think great thoughts. Cities, towns, and academic communities of all shapes and sizes need the free, open public spaces that libraries–and only libraries–provide.”

John Palfrey (1972) US law professor

“I am quite ready to take the Oriental learning at the valuation of the Orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

“I couldn't live a week without a private library - indeed, I'd part with all my furniture and squat and sleep on the floor before I'd let go of the 1500 or so books I possess.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

“I wanted to live among books.”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

“Sometimes when I'm in a bookstore or library, I am overwhelmed by all the things that I do not know. Then I am seized by a powerful desire to read all the books, one by one.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host