Library-denigrators, pay heed: suggesting that the Internet is a viable substitute for libraries is like saying porn could replace your wife.

One of the nastier trends in library management in recent years is the notion that libraries should be 'responsive to their patrons'.

The world is full of magical places, and the library has always been one of them for me. A library can be that special place for our children.

A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas - a place where history comes to life.

The man who has a library of his own collection is able to contemplate himself objectively, and is justified in believing in his own existence.

I am proud to say that I am not in it for the money. If I made a million dollars, I would donate most of it to various charities and libraries.

To be a librarian is not to be neutral, or passive, or waiting for a question. It is to be a radical positive change agent within your community.

Many existing top 20 Scottish writers have flourished in part because of good turns done by institutions, arts community, libraries and bookshops.

When you steal from the library, you are preventing anyone else from reading that book, and the very notion makes me want to drop you in the Void.

Entering a library, I am always stuck by the way in which a certain vision of the world is imposed upon the reader through its categories and its order.

A good library will never be too neat, or too dusty, because somebody will always be in it, taking books off the shelves and staying up late reading them.

A library is a different kind of social reality (of the three dimensional kind), which by its very existence teaches a system of values beyond the fiscal.

The library is the worst group of people ever assembled in history. They're mean, conniving, rude, and extremely well-read, which makes them dangerous.

Mostrare la propria libreria è come far entrare un estraneo nell'intimità. È come raccontare dei propri flirt. Una cosa da evitare.

In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.