Existing libraries, in their very being, seem to question the authority of those in power. — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
“The weight of absence is as much a feature of any library as the constriction of order and space.” — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
“... to lend a book is an incitement to theft." A Reader on Reading p. 281” — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
Every reader has found charms by which to secure possession of a page that, by magic, becomes as if never read before,… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
“Like Petrach's, my books know infinitely more than I do, and I'm grateful that they even tolerate my presence. At times I… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
“Cataloguing is an ancient profession; there are examples of such “ordainers of the universe” (as they were called by the Sumerians) among… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
“Each reader is but one chapter in the life of a book, and unless he passes his knowledge on to others, it… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
If the library in the morning suggests an echo of the severe and reasonable wishful order of the world, the library at… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
I have no feelings of guilt regarding the books I have not read and perhaps will never read; I know that my… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
A library is an ever-growing entity; it multiples seemingly unaided, it reproduces itself by purchase, theft, borrowings, gifts, by suggesting gaps through… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
In the dark, with the windows lit and the rows of books glittering, the library is a closed space, a universe of… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
It hardly matters why a library is destroyed: every banning, curtailment, shredding, plunder or loot gives rise (at least as a ghostly… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
I had a library of maybe 1,000 books in my room in Buenos Aires. I did have the sense that everything there… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
“As any reader knows, a printed page creates its own reading space, its own physical landscape in which the texture of the… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book—that string of confused, alien ciphers—shivered into meaning. Words spoke… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
“The existence of any library, even mine, allows readers a sense of what their craft is truly about, a craft that struggles… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
“This is the paradox presented by every general library: that if, to a lesser or greater extent, it intends to accumulate and… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
“...any library, by its very existence, conjures up its forbidden or forgotten double: an invisible but formidable library of the books that,… — 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
Our books will bear witness for or against us, our books reflect who we are and who we have been, our books… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
All these are readers, and their gestures, their craft, the pleasure, the responsibility and the power they derive from reading, are common… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
“A library is not only a place of both order and chaos; it is also the realm of chance. Books, even after… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
The shelves of books we haven't written, like those of books we haven't read, stretches out into the darkness of the universal… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
If the Library of Alexandria was the emblem of our ambition of omniscience, the Web is the emblem of our ambition of… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
Entering a library, I am always stuck by the way in which a certain vision of the world is imposed upon the… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
Old books that we have known but not possessed cross our path and invite themselves over. New books try to seduce us… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
My books hold between their covers every story I've ever known and still remember, or have now forgotten, or may one day… — 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
Without Leskov there would be no Bulgakov, no Chekhov, but also no Garca Mrquez and Julio Cortzar. . . . Leskov is… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
“It is likely that libraries will carry on and survive, as long as we persist in lending words to the world that… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
Every reader exists to ensure for a certain book a modest immortality. Reading is, in this sense, a ritual of rebirth. — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
Maybe this is why we read, and why in moments of darkness we return to books: to find words for what we… — 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
“Libraries, have always seemed to me pleasantly mad places, and for as long as I can remember I’ve been seduced by their… — 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
“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
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
“Over the years, my experience, my tastes, my prejudices have changed: as the days go by, my memory keeps reshelving, cataloguing, discarding… — 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
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
