#libra

But the central branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library was still a place of wonders to Tess, even if the book budget had been slashed and the hours cut. Her parents had made a lot of mistakes, a fact Tess compulsively shared on first dates, but she gave them credit for doing one thing right: Starting when she was eight, they gave her a library card and dropped her off at the downtown Pratt every Saturday while they shopped. Twenty-one years later, Tess still entered through the children's entrance on the side, pausing to toss a penny in the algae-coated fish pond, then climbing the stairs to the main hall. If she could be married here, she would. ↗

— Laura Lippman

#dating

In the wide pile, by others heeded not, Hers was one sacred solitary spot, Whose gloomy aisles and bending shelves contain For moral hunger food, and cures for moral pain. ↗

— Walter Scott

#library #solitude #food

THOMASINA: But then the Egyptian noodle made carnal embrace with the enemy who burned the great library of Alexandria without so much as a fine for all that is overdue! ↗

— Tom Stoppard

#humor #libraries #thomasina #humor

Oh, wow." "What do you think?" "I tried to imagine, but--I mean...it's so much more--" "Think it's large enough to keep you satisfied for a while?" "It's so much bigger than I expected" He backed away, leaving Beatrice to gaze in wonder at the library that took up half of the second floor. "I think I'll just leave you two alone for a bit," he said with a chuckle. ↗

— Elizabeth Hunter

#giovanni #library #sexual-innuendo #imagination

Some people write letters, in the library. ↗

— Margaret Atwood

#library #imagination

When I got [my] library card, that was when my life began. ↗

— Rita Mae Brown

#reading #life

You asked me where I generally lived. In my workshop [i.e. in his study] in the mornings and always in the library in the evening. Books are companions even if you don’t open them. ↗

— Benjamin Disraeli

#life

CREATION The library is not a shrine for the worship of books. It is not a temple where literary incense must be burned or where one's devotion to the bound book is expressed in ritual. 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. — Cited in ALA Bulletin, Oct. 1954, p.475 Norman COUSINS (1915- ) ↗

— Cousins

#life

The love of libraries, like most loves, must be learned. ↗

— Alberto Manguel

#library #love

I have loved this disaster of a library since I was old enough to read. ↗

— Eleanor Brown

#reading #love