#library

There are distinct duties of a poet laureate. I plan a reading series at the Library of Congress and advise the librarian. The rest is how I want to promote poetry. ↗

— Rita Dove

#congress #distinct #duties #how #i

Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have left me. ↗

— Anatole France

#ever #folks #i #left #lend

I basically did all the library research for this book on Google, and it not only saved me enormous amounts of time but actually gave me a much richer offering of research in a shorter time. ↗

— Thomas Friedman

#basically #book #did #enormous #gave

My parents, and librarians along the way, taught me about the space between words; about the margins, where so many juicy moments of life and spirit and friendship could be found. In a library, you could find miracles and truth and you might find something that would make you laugh so hard that you get shushed, in the friendliest way. ↗

— Anne Lamott

#along #between #could #find #found

I look at the books on my library shelves. They certainly seem dormant. But what if the characters are quietly rearranging themselves? What if Emma Woodhouse doesn’t learn from her mistakes? What if Tom Jones descends into a sodden life of poaching and outlawry? What if Eve resists Satan, remembering God’s injunction and Adam’s loving advice? I imagine all the characters bustling to get back into their places as they feel me taking the book down from the shelf. “Hurry,” they say, “he’ll expect to find us exactly where he left us, never mind how much his life has changed in the meantime. ↗

— Verlyn Klinkenborg

#library #reading #change

There are times when I think that the ideal library is composed solely of reference books. They are like understanding friends—always ready to meet your mood, always ready to change the subject when you have had enough of this or that. ↗

— J. Donald Adams

#friends #library #mood #truth #change

I cannot sufficiently celebrate the glorious liberty that reigns in the public libraries of the twentieth century as compared with the intolerable management of those of the nineteenth century, in which the books were jealously railed away from the people, and obtainable only at an expenditure of time and red tape calculated to discourage any ordinary taste for literature. ↗

— Edward Bellamy

#customer-service #library #library-books #change

I like to imagine that, on the day after my last, my library and I will crumble together, so that even when I am no more I'll still be with my books. ↗

— Alberto Manguel

#death #library #death

There's a serendipity to real life that the Internet can't duplicate. Do you use the library? For anything? Well, sometimes you end up picking up the book next to the one you were looking for, and it's that book that changes your life. ↗

— Laura Lippman

#library-books #library-in-the-digital-age #age

We can imagine the books we'd like to read, even if they have not yet been written, and we can imagine libraries full of books we would like to possess, even if they are well beyond our reacher, because we enjoy dreaming up a library that reflects every one of our interests and every one of our foibles--a library that, in its variety and complexity, fully reflects the reader we are. ↗

— Alberto Manguel

#dream #dreaming #library #reader #reading