#libra

For the rest of the afternoon, Miss Bloom smiled almost as bright as the big yellow sun shining through the front picture window. Her library was filled up with people who loved books. ↗

— Augusta Scattergood

#civil-rights-movement #happiness #libraries #mississippi-authors #love

I finally found my way to the Really Restricted Section, where they keep the kind of books most scholars aren't even supposed to know exist. I knocked on the closed door, said the proper passwords, and the door opened before me. I walked in, and the ghost of the Head Librarian, a thin, dusty presence, with dark eyes and a disapproving look, appeared before me, blocking my way. (He had been eaten by a book, then brought back by the other books, apparently because they approved of him. Because even though he didn't have much time for people, he loved books.) ↗

— Simon R. Green

#eaten-by-a-book #forbidden-books #ghosts #librarians #libraries

But then his parents changed. A year of California had changed them. They stopped sending money. Greg was forced to go out into the world, to interact with real people. And he was glad of this. He had always wanted to be a normal person. To be at ease in society. He had just been too scared to try. But now he was forced to, and so he did–he went and got a job at the public library. He was not quite a librarian, but close. Greg was a shelver. There would be carts of books to shelve, then there would be no more carts of books to shelve, then there would be carts of books to shelve. As a shelver, Greg felt that life was passing him by in a slow and distant, but massive, way–like the moon. ↗

— Tao Lin

#shelving #change

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

— Joanne Harris

#inspirational #libraries #library #humor

Today, if you want to access a typical out-of-print book, you have only one choice - fly to one of a handful of leading libraries in the country and hope to find it in the stacks. ↗

— Sergey Brin

#book #choice #country #find #fly

It may not be possible to get rare roast beef but if you're willing to settle for well done, ask them to hold the sweetened library paste that passes for gravy. ↗

— Marian Burros

#beef #done #get #gravy #hold

the best of Cervantes is untranslatable, and this undeniable fact is in itself an incentive [for one and all] to learn Spanish. ↗

— Aubrey F.G. Bell

#cervantes #don-quixote #great-books #man-of-la-mancha #modern-library

There's not a good poet I know who has not at the beck and call of his memory a vast quantity of poetry that composes his mental library. ↗

— Anthony Hecht

#call #composes #good #his #i

The library would've cheered me up, most days. I loved the heavy oaken tables, the high walls stacked with books to the ceiling, the musty smell of old pages and the heavy brass fixtures that had gone dark with age and wear. ↗

— Claudia Gray

#books #evernight #library #age

With a library you are free, not confined by temporary political climates. It is the most democratic of institutions because no one - but no one at all - can tell you what to read and when and how. ↗

— Doris Lessing

#climates #confined #democratic #free #how