Life happened because I turned the pages.
Deserted libraries hold the shades of writers who worked within, and are haunted by their absence.
A library is an ever-growing entity; it multiples seemingly unaided, it reproduces itself by purchase, theft, borrowings, gifts, by suggesting gaps through association, by demanding completion of sort...
There is a line of poetry, a sentence in a fable, a word in an essay, by which my existence is justified; find that line, and immortality is assured.
The world encyclopedia, the universal library, exists, and it is the world itself.
Immaterial as water, too vast for any mortal apprehension, the Web's outstanding qualities allow us to confuse the ungraspable with the eternal.
I wanted to live among books.
I like to imagine that, on the day after my last, my library and I will crumble together, so that even when I am no more I'll still be with my books.
Histories, chronologies and almanacs offer us the illusion of progress, even though, over and over again, we are given proof that there is no such thing.
But at night, when the library lamps are lit, the outside world disappears and nothing but the space of books remains in existence.
أن الحاجة تجعل الأشياء تزدهر في حين أن التملك يذبلها
The thing is, I don’t know if these stories he was telling were mine, or his, or someone else’s. You spend your life among words, listening, making sense out of what you say and out of what you imagin...
The starting point is a question.
No one stepping for the first time into a room made of books can know instinctively how to behave, what is expected, what is promised, what is allowed. One may be overcome by horror--at the cluster or...
My library was to me an utterly private space that both enclosed and mirrored me.
In the dark, with the windows lit and the rows of books glittering, the library is a closed space, a universe of self-serving rules that pretend to replace or translate those of the shapeless universe...
In a library, no empty shelf remains empty for long.
Hier in Buenos Aires träume ich auf Spanisch von Menschen, die nicht sprechen und mich nicht hören - und immer von der Stadt, wie ich sie früher kannte, niemals, wie sie heute ist.
All these are readers, and their gestures, their craft, the pleasure, the responsibility and the power they derive from reading, are common with mine. I am not alone.
يظهر هذا في أن نفس الصفحة من الكتاب تدفع أحد القراء إلى التشكك في عقله والقارئ الآخر للضحك