The association of books with their readers is unlike any other between objects and their users. — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
“There is an unbridgeable chasm between the book that traditions had declared a classic and the book (the same book) that we… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
A writer stops writing the moment he or she puts the last full stop to their text, and at that point the… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
If every library is in some sense a reflection of its readers, it is also an image of that which we are… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
This morning I looked at the books on my shelves and thought that they have no knowledge of my existence. They come… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
Slothful, feeble, pretentious, pedantic, elitist - these are some of the epithets that eventually become associated with the absent minded scholar, the… — 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
Readers are bullied in schoolyards and in locker-rooms as much as in government offices and prisons. — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
From fire, water, the passage of time, neglectful readers, and the hand of the censor, each of my books has escaped to… — 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
It is in the translation that the innocence lost after the first reading is restored under another guise, since the reader is… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
To say that an author is a reader or a reader an author, to see a book as a human being or… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
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
In any of my pages in any of my books may life a perfect account of my secret experience of the world. — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
“Paolo and Francesca were not ideal readers since they confess to Dante that after the first kiss they read no more. Ideal… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
As readers, we have gone from learning a precious craft whose secret was held by a jealous few, to taking for granted… — 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
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
“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
“Only when, years later, I touched for the first time my lover's body did I realize that literature could sometimes fall short… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
“Outside theology and fantastic literature, few can doubt that the main features of our universe are its dearth of meaning and lack… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
Reality deals in specifics under the guise of generalities. Literature does the contrary... — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
I quickly learned that reading is cumulative and proceeds by geometrical progression: each new reading builds upon whatever the reader has read… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
But at night, when the library lamps are lit, the outside world disappears and nothing but the space of books remains in… — 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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 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 library's farthest… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
“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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
“Ljubav je imbecilna izvesnost pomoću koje naša fantazija stvara verodostojnu utvaru.” — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
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 Image
