#libraries

I grew up in a utopia, I did. California when I was a child was a child's paradise, I was healthy, well fed, well clothed, well housed. I went to school and there were libraries with all the world in them and after school I played in orange groves and in Little League and in the band and down at the beach and every day was an adventure. . . . I grew up in utopia. ↗

— Kim Stanley Robinson

#beach #california #groves #libraries #library

In the nonstop tsunami of global information, librarians provide us with floaties and teach us to swim. ↗

— Linton Weeks

#libraries #washington-post #information

I attempted in vain to calculate the size of the holdings on the shelves, floor on floor, only to boggle hopelessly, baffled by bibliographic boundlessness. ↗

— Richard Fortey

#nature

A teenager deserves a library that recognizes reality. He needs an information source and study area that does not impose arbitrary, crippling rules on him. His library should recognize that dignity and silence are not prior requisites to learning […] He would like, needs, and deserves for other people to stop trying to protect him and allow him the right to choose information for himself […] Most of all the teenager needs people in libraries to recognize and accept him as a respectable human being. ↗

— Anne Osborn

#respect

A library is a place where you can lose your innocence without losing your virginity. ↗

— Germaine Greer

#libraries #reading #sexuality #virginity #innocence

If your library is not "unsafe," it probably isn't doing its job. ↗

— John Berry

#libraries #library #reading #job

One of the most subversive institutions in the United States is the public library.. ↗

— Bell Hooks

#self-esteem

She was brilliant and joyous and she believed- probably correctly- that libraries contain the answers to all things, to everything, and that if you can't find the information you seek in the library, then such information probably doesn't exist in this or any parallel universe now or ever to be known. She was thoughtful and kind and she always believed the best of everybody. She was, above all else, a master librarian and she knew where to find any book on any subject in the shortest possible time. And she was wonderfully unhinged. ↗

— Gary Paulsen

#libraries #librarians

We'll always need printed books that don't mutate the way digital books do; we'll always need places to display books, auditoriums for book talks, circles for story time; we'll always need brick-and-mortar libraries. ↗

— Marilyn Johnson

#libraries #library #librarians

Our generation in the west was lucky: we had readymade gateways. We had books, paper, teachers, schools and libraries. But many in the world lack these luxuries. How do you practice without such tryout venues? ↗

— Margaret Atwood

#generation #had #how #lack #libraries