““A bonfire of the books. The thought curdles me. Some say my species is imperishable, but they lie, for ours is a chilling, provisional immortality. Although we commonly outlive our creators, the curious scholar need look no further than the inferno that razed the library of Alexandria to realize that a book may vanish irretrievably, leaving behind only a whiff of carbon and a pile of ash. Gutenberg, of course, did much to allay our angst -- for us the coming of mo vable type was the equivalent to the arrival of gonads amongst you vertebrates -- but the fact remains that visions of extinction haunt all texts. The moral of my dread is simple. Treasure each volume you hold in your hands, and read it whilst ye may. The Last WitchFinder””
![“Alexandria and its scholars […] never mistook the true nature of the past; they knew it to be the source of an ever-shifting present in which new readers engaged with old books which became new in the reading process. Every reader exists to ensure for a certain book a modest immortality. Reading…” quote by Alberto Manguel](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/9ce/alberto-manguel-2467_books_alexandria-and-its-scholars-never-mistoo_2098862.jpg)
![“[...] as Kurt Vonnegut pointed out [...] the literary novel has become extraordinarily privatistic of late. It's as if the big issues (Does God exist? from whence springs decency? what sort of species is Homo Sapiens?) were either settled or not worth discusssing, and serious writers should…” quote by James Morrow](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/ea7/james-morrow-40721_books_as-kurt-vonnegut-pointed-out-the-literar_175007.jpg)
