4 Quotes by Penelope Lively about libraries
- Author Penelope Lively
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Books are the mind's ballast, for so many of us--the cargo that makes us what we are, a freight that is ephemeral and indelible, half-forgotten but leaving an imprint. They are nutrition, too. My old age fear is not being able to read--the worst deprivation. Or no longer having my books around me: the familiar, eclectic, explanatory assemblage that hitches me to the wide world, that has freed me from the prison of myself, that has helped me to think, and to write.
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- Author Penelope Lively
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Early reading is serendipitous, and rightly so. Gloriously so. Libraries favor serendipity, invite it; the roaming along a shelf, eyeing an unfamiliar name, taking this down, then that--oh, who's this? Never heard of her--give her a go? That is where, and how, you learn affinity and rejection. You find out what you like by exploring what you do not.
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- Author Penelope Lively
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Anyone would think we were some kind of free education service,' grumbled Joyce, having disposed of the child and returned to her central eyrie.'That's just what we are,' said Helen.Joyce shot her a look in which surprise and indignation were nicely fused.
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- Author Penelope Lively
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A great library is anything and everything. It is not for its current custodians to judge what the future will find to be of importance, and it is this eclecticism that gives it the mystique, that is the wonder of it.
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