Readers are bullied in schoolyards and in locker-rooms as much as in government offices and prisons. — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
When literature is discovered, a revelation occurs: the joyful, exultant knowledge that anything can happen. — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
Books read in a public library never have the same flavour as books read in the attic or the kitchen. — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
Ultimately, the number of books always exceeds the space they are granted. — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
“Books are our best possessions in life, they are our immortality.” — 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
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
“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
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
“The power of readers lies not in their ability to gather information, in their ordering and cataloguing capability, but in their gift… — 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
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
“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
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
“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
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
“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
“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
“I have no feeling of guilt regarding the books I have not read and perhaps will never read; I know that my… — 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… — 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
“I don’t think that the definition of library has changed. Libraries have never been repositories solely of books. In Alexandria for instance,… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
“There is nothing,” Naudé wrote, “that renders a Library more recommendable, than when every man finds in it that which he is… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
“However readers make a book theirs, the end is that book and reader become one. The world that is a book is… — 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
We can roam the bloated stacks of the Library of Alexandria, where all imagination and knowledge are assembled; we can recognize in… — 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
“Libraries, whether my own or shared with a greater reading public, have always seemed to me pleasantly mad places, and for as… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
“No one stepping for the first time into a room made of books can know instinctively how to behave, what is expected,… — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
In the light, we read the inventions of others; in the darkness we invent our own stories. — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
Reality deals in specifics under the guise of generalities. Literature does the contrary... — Alberto Manguel Copy Share Image
The readers who commited suicide after reading 'Werther' were not ideal but merely sentimental readers. — 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
