“When I got [my] library card, that was when my life began.”

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "When I got [my] library card, that was when my life began." by Rita Mae Brown?

Rita Mae Brown38

Novelist, poet, screenwriter, activist 1944

Related quotes

“For Beatrice--When we met, my life began. Soon afterwards, yours ended”

Daniel Handler book The Ersatz Elevator

Lemony Snicket
The Ersatz Elevator (2001)

“In my life I've been through plenty. when I was three years old, my parents got a dog. I was jealous of the dog, so they got rid of me.”

Rodney Dangerfield (1921–2004) American actor and comedian

Source: It's Not Easy Bein' Me: A Lifetime of No Respect But Plenty of Sex and Drugs (2004), p. 6

“My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold, (1802); the last three lines of this form the introductory lines of the long Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood begun the next day.

“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 (1948) writer

Source: The Library at Night

“My life began when my grandmother decided to take hers, when I found out that my mother's whole family did the same thing [told bij het grandfather c. 1941], when I found out that I am the only one surviving, and when I felt the same inclination deep inside of me, craving for despair and death.”

Charlotte Salomon (1917–1943) German painter

Quote in Charlotte's letter, to her father, c. 1941-43; as cited in 'Life in Pictures Charlotte Salomon and her art beyond life tragedies' https://arthive.com/publications/2850~Life_in_Pictures_Charlotte_Salomon_and_her_art_beyond_life_tragedies, on Art-smart <br class="br">Charlotte wrote her father from South-France, about the events with her grandparents where she stayed. Then she took up her brush with the intention to realize an ambitious plan of creating an autobiographical novel in pictures.

“I received the fundamentals of my education in school, but that was not enough. My real education, the superstructure, the details, the true architecture, I got out of the public library.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

Source: I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994), Ch. 8, Library
Context: I received the fundamentals of my education in school, but that was not enough. My real education, the superstructure, the details, the true architecture, I got out of the public library. For an impoverished child whose family could not afford to buy books, the library was the open door to wonder and achievement, and I can never be sufficiently grateful that I had the wit to charge through that door and make the most of it.
Now, when I read constantly about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that the door is closing and that American society has found one more way to destroy itself.