199 Quotes by Alberto Manguel

Immaterial as water, too vast for any mortal apprehension, the Web's outstanding qualities allow us to confuse the ungraspable with the eternal.

Readers, censors know, are defined by the books they read.

Unpacking books is a revelatory activity.

If every library is in some sense a reflection of its readers, it is also an image of that which we are not, and cannot be.

But at night, when the library lamps are lit, the outside world disappears and nothing but the space of books remains in existence.

In a library, no empty shelf remains empty for long.

It hardly matters why a library is destroyed: every banning, curtailment, shredding, plunder or loot gives rise (at least as a ghostly presence) to a louder, clearer, more durable library of the banned, looted, plundered, shredded or curtailed.

In the dark, with the windows lit and the rows of books glittering, the library is a closed space, a universe of self-serving rules that pretend to replace or translate those of the shapeless universe beyond.

A library is an ever-growing entity; it multiples seemingly unaided, it reproduces itself by purchase, theft, borrowings, gifts, by suggesting gaps through association, by demanding completion of sorts.