I enjoyed learning the poems, but I didn't understand of what use they might possibly be. ‘They'll keep you company on the… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
The world that is a book is devoured bya reader who is a letter in the world's text; thus a circular metaphor… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
In every literate society, learning to read is something of an initiation, a ritualized passage out of a state of dependency and… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
“We read to understand our intuition of the world, to discover that someone a thousand miles and years away has put into… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
“I soon discovered that one doesn't simply read Crime and Punishment or A Tree Grows in Brooklyn . One reads a certain… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
“The categories that a reader brings to a reading, and the categories in which that reading itself is placed - the learned… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
Our society accepts the book as a given, but the act of reading -- once considered useful and important, as well as… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
In the books by Ruy-Sanchez we find again the erotic conviction that allows us to read with all the skin. The erotic,… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
We can imagine the books we'd like to read, even if they have not yet been written, and we can imagine libraries… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
At night, here in the library, the ghosts have voices… The various qualities of my readings seem to permeate my every muscle,… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
As readers, we are seldom interested in the fine sentiments of a lesson learnt; we seldom care about the good manners of… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
Through ignorance, through faith, through intelligence, through trickery and cunning, through illumination, the reader rewrites the text with the same words of… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
It used to be that readers were relegated because they considered themselves far above society, and so the metaphor of the ivory… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
The listeners who buy books after a reading multiply that reading; the author who realizes that he or she may be writing… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
Old or new, the only sign I always try to rid my books of (usually with little success) is the price-sticker that… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
It has always been my experience that, whatever groupings I choose for my books, the space in which I plan to lodge… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
For Borges, the core of reality lay in books; reading books, writing books, talking about books. In a visceral way, he was… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
“One book calls to another unexpectedly, creating alliances across different cultures and centuries. A half-remembered line is echoed by another for reasons… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
The stories that unfold in the space of a writer's study, the objects chosen to watch over a desk, the books selected… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
Most readers, then and now, have at some time experienced the humiliation of being told that their occupation is reprehensible. — Alberto Manguel Copy Share
Libraries, whether my own or shared with a greater reading public, have always seemed to me pleasantly mad places, and for as long as… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share
At different times and in different places I have come to expect certain books to look a certain way, and, as in all fashions,… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share
I have no feelings of guilt regarding the books I have not read and perhaps will never read; I know that my books have… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share
“Then one day, from the window of a car (the destination of that journey is now forgotten), I saw a billboard by the side… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share
The shelves of books we haven't written, like those of books we haven't read, stretches out into the darkness of the universal library's farthest… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share
“I have no feeling of guilt regarding the books I have not read and perhaps will never read; I know that my books have… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share
Old books that we have known but not possessed cross our path and invite themselves over. New books try to seduce us daily with… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share
Ordered by subject, by importance, ordered according to whether the book was penned by God or by one of God's creatures, ordered alphabetically or… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share
“Ljubav je imbecilna izvesnost pomoću koje naša fantazija stvara verodostojnu utvaru.” — Alberto Manguel Copy Share
I know that something dies when i give up my books, and that my memory keeps going back to them with mournful nostalgia. — Alberto Manguel Copy Share
Something about the possession of a book - an object that can contain infinite fables, words of wisdom, chronicles of times gone by, humorous… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share
Maybe this is why we read, and why in moments of darkness we return to books: to find words for what we already know. — Alberto Manguel Copy Share
As centuries of dictators have known, an illiterate crowd is the easiest to rule; since the craft of reading cannot be untaught once it… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share
