“To live in the world without becoming aware of the meaning of the world is like wandering about in a great library without touching the books. It has always seemed to me that symbolism should be restored to the structure of world education.”

“What in the world would we do without our libraries?”

“All the world was before me and every day was a holiday, so it did not seem important to which one of the world's wildernesses I first should wander.”

“Give a girl an education and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one but she has the means of settling well, without further expense to anybody.”

“There are always some lunatics about. It would be a dull world without them.”

“She loaned him books. Worlds were revealed to him: worlds piled on worlds, worlds without end.”

“It seemed incredible to me that day without premonitions or symbols should be the one of my inexorable death.”

“The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware. In this state of god-like awareness one sings; in this realm the world exists as poem.”

“Legal practice has become globalized. And I advocate lawyers without borders and like doctors without borders so that you can practice anywhere in the world.”

“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 If you perceive a library as a shelf of books, it may seem antiquated or outdated in a world in which most, but not all, books in print exist digitally.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.”