Old books that we have known but not possessed cross our path and invite themselves over. New books try to seduce us daily with tempting titles and tantalizing covers.
From fire, water, the passage of time, neglectful readers, and the hand of the censor, each of my books has escaped to tell me its story.
Ancient Egypt 1300BCBe a scribe! Engrave this in your heartSo that your name might live on like theirs!The scroll is better than the carved stone.A man has died: his corpse is dust,And his people have...
In the light, we read the inventions of others; in the darkness we invent our own stories.
I have no feelings of guilt regarding the books I have not read and perhaps will never read; I know that my books have unlimited patience. They will wait for me till the end of my days.
Geschichten sind unser Gedächtnis, Bibliotheken die Lagerstätten für dieses Gedächtnis und Lesen das Handwerk, mit dem wir dieses Gedächtnis neu erschaffen können, indem wir es rezitieren und glossier...
I know my time will come soon enough, but I will not dwell on it. What is the purpose? We might as well dwell on the work of our teeth or on the mechanics of our walk. It is there, it will always be t...
Hinter dem westlichen Konzept einer Idealstadt verbirgt sich die Idee der Privilegierung. Moreau hätte ihm ohne Zweifel zugestimmt.
إن الحكام الديكتاتوريين يخافون الكتب أكثر من أي إختراع آخر على الإطلاق
During the day, the library is a realm of order.
But a reader's ambition knows no bounds.
The Bush administration may, in future years, be remembered 'for bringing peace to the Middle East' (as Condoleezza Rice has pronounced). History may be the mother of truth, but it can also give birth...
أعطتني القراءة عذرا مقبولا لعزلتي، بل ربما أعطت مغزى لتلك العزلة المفروضة علي.
Unicorns, dragons, witches may be creatures conjured up in dreams, but on the page their needs, joys, anguishes, and redemptions should be just as true as those of Madame Bovary or Martin Chuzzlewit.
If the library in the morning suggests an echo of the severe and reasonable wishful order of the world, the library at night seems to rejoice in the world's essential, joyful muddle.
And sometimes, when the stars are kind, we read with an intake of breath, with a shudder, as if someone or something had 'walked over our grave,' as if a memory had suddenly been rescued from a place...
The love of libraries, like most loves, must be learned.
Reality deals in specifics under the guise of generalities. Literature does the contrary...
Ljubav je imbecilna izvesnost pomoću koje naša fantazija stvara verodostojnu utvaru.
I’ve often felt that my library explained who I was, gave me a shifting self that transformed itself constantly throughout the years.