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

— Rita Mae Brown

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Rita Mae Brown 38

Novelist, poet, screenwriter, activist 1944

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“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.”

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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.