Alberto Manguel

“Libraries are not, never will be, used by everyone.”

— Alberto Manguel

“... to lend a book is an incitement to theft." A Reader on Reading p. 281”

— Alberto Manguel

“Cataloguing is an ancient profession; there are examples of such “ordainers of the universe” (as they were called by the Sumerians) among…

— Alberto Manguel

“Each reader is but one chapter in the life of a book, and unless he passes his knowledge on to others, it…

— Alberto Manguel

“Histories, chronologies and almanacs offer us the illusion of progress, even though, over and over again, we are given proof that there…

— Alberto Manguel

If the library in the morning suggests an echo of the severe and reasonable wishful order of the world, the library at…

— Alberto Manguel

Deadlines comes as a surprise…superb: a new genre, in fact, combining the pleasures of list-making with that of last-minute eaves-dropping.

— Alberto Manguel

I have no feelings of guilt regarding the books I have not read and perhaps will never read; I know that my…

— Alberto Manguel

Readers are bullied in schoolyards and in locker-rooms as much as in government offices and prisons.

— Alberto Manguel

When literature is discovered, a revelation occurs: the joyful, exultant knowledge that anything can happen.

— Alberto Manguel

Libraries, whether my own or shared with a greater reading public, have always seemed to me pleasantly mad places, and for as…

— Alberto Manguel

“A day or so before his death, Borges called Bioy from Geneva. Bioy said that he sounded infinitely sad. “What are you…

— Alberto Manguel

It hardly matters why a library is destroyed: every banning, curtailment, shredding, plunder or loot gives rise (at least as a ghostly…

— Alberto Manguel

Ordered by subject, by importance, ordered according to whether the book was penned by God or by one of God's creatures, ordered…

— Alberto Manguel

Unicorns, dragons, witches may be creatures conjured up in dreams, but on the page their needs, joys, anguishes, and redemptions should be…

— Alberto Manguel

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

“As any reader knows, a printed page creates its own reading space, its own physical landscape in which the texture of the…

— Alberto Manguel

I know my time will come soon enough, but I will not dwell on it. What is the purpose? We might as…

— Alberto Manguel

“Libraries, whether my own or shared with a greater reading public, have always seemed to me pleasantly mad places, and for as…

— Alberto Manguel

“The thing is, I don’t know if these stories he was telling were mine, or his, or someone else’s. You spend your…

— Alberto Manguel

“Outside theology and fantastic literature, few can doubt that the main features of our universe are its dearth of meaning and lack…

— Alberto Manguel

“Then one day, from the window of a car (the destination of that journey is now forgotten), I saw a billboard by…

— Alberto Manguel

“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

The association of books with their readers is unlike any other between objects and their users.

— Alberto Manguel

I like to imagine that, on the day after my last, my library and I will crumble together, so that even when…

— Alberto Manguel

One book calls to another unexpectedly, creating alliances across different cultures and centuries.

— Alberto Manguel

All these are readers, and their gestures, their craft, the pleasure, the responsibility and the power they derive from reading, are common…

— Alberto Manguel

Deserted libraries hold the shades of writers who worked within, and are haunted by their absence.

— Alberto Manguel

“A library is not only a place of both order and chaos; it is also the realm of chance. Books, even after…

— Alberto Manguel

“Paolo and Francesca were not ideal readers since they confess to Dante that after the first kiss they read no more. Ideal…

— Alberto Manguel

The readers who commited suicide after reading 'Werther' were not ideal but merely sentimental readers.

— Alberto Manguel

Entering a library, I am always stuck by the way in which a certain vision of the world is imposed upon the…

— Alberto Manguel

Old books that we have known but not possessed cross our path and invite themselves over. New books try to seduce us…

— Alberto Manguel

A society can exist - many do exist - without writing, but no society can exist without reading.

— Alberto Manguel

Most readers, then and now, have at some time experienced the humiliation of being told that their occupation is reprehensible.

— Alberto Manguel

“The weight of absence is as much a feature of any library as the constriction of order and space.”

— Alberto Manguel

Socrates affirmed that only that which the reader already knows can be sparked by a reading, and that the knowledge cannot be…

— Alberto Manguel

In any of my pages in any of my books may life a perfect account of my secret experience of the world.

— Alberto Manguel

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

“Immaterial as water, too vast for any mortal apprehension, the Web's outstanding qualities allow us to confuse the ungraspable with the eternal.”

— Alberto Manguel