“Prospero's power is held in his relationship to his books, and The Tempest is witness to more than a few apparently conflicting facets of his personality -- not all of them particularly praiseworthy. What was it, in those books, that made Prospero not only powerful but also a moralising schold and a petty revenger, a benevolent despote, a jealous father and also a master designer of song and dance? Are we truly the product of what we read?”

“Prospero has always felt most at ease in a study, surrounded by books.”

“Gonzalo threw many books into the bottom of the leaky vessel that took Prospero out on to the sea away from Italy and Europe into exile. Shakespeare does not, of course, elaborate what these volumes were. Prospero's Books speculates. There would need perhaps to be books on navigation and survival, there would need to be books for an elderly scholar to learn how to rear and educate a young daughter, how to colonise an island, farm it, subjugate its inhabitants, identify its plants and husband its wild beasts. There would need to be books to offer solace and advise patience and put past glory and present despondency into perspective. There would need to be books to encourage revenge.”

“How a person masters his fate is more important than what his fate is.”

“We should be as careful of the books we read, as of the company we keep. The dead very often have more power than the living.”

“buying books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them.”

“They had only ever discussed books but what, in this life, is more personal than books?”

“Each person designs his own life, freedom gives him the power to carry out his own designs, and power gives the freedom to interfere with the designs of others.”

“This man in his own country prayed we know not to what powers.
We pray them to reward him for his bravery in ours.”

“A fool may buy all the books in the world, and they will be in his library; but he will be able to read only those that he deserves to.”