“You see? I know where every single book used to be in the library.' She pointed to the shelf opposite. 'Over there was, which was a hugely popular fishing book and one of a series, I believe.”

“But libraries are about freedom. Freedom to read, freedom of ideas, freedom of communication. They are about education (which is not a process that finishes the day we leave school or university), about entertainment, about making safe spaces, and about access to information. I worry that here in the 21st century people misunderstand what libraries are and the purpose of them. If you perceive a library as a shelf of books, it may seem antiquated or outdated in a world in which most, but not all, books in print exist digitally. But that is to miss the point fundamentally.”

“She loved the smell of books, the feel of books, the look of them on the shelf.”

“… and best of all, the wilderness of books, in which she could wander, where she liked, made the library a region of bliss to her.”

“"Some would argue, you know, in some of the books of the New Testament, the ending of the Book of Job is different. I think, if I'm not mistaken, there's one book where there's a more optimistic ending, which we believe was tacked on later." --January 3, 2004”

“I attempted briefly to consecrate myself in the public library, believing every crack in my soul could be chinked with a book.”

“A man will turn over half a library to make one book.”

“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.”

“If you steal any of the books from the library, I will know, and you'll be sorry.
Jessamine Lovelace.”

“To take another simile [that the brain is like a machine], if we imagine a great library containing books which have a vast number of cross references one to another, then should one whole shelf be burned, it might be possible to reconstruct the lost books -- but somewhat less perfectly than at first.”