The probability of finding a particular book increases in relation to the clarity of the store’s focus, the diligence and shrewdness of the bookseller, and the size of the business.

What does it matter how cultivated and up-to-date we are, or how many thousands of books we’ve read? What matters is how we feel, how we see, what we do after reading; whether the street and the clouds and the existence of others mean anything to us; whether reading makes us, physically, more alive.

As publishing has become less expensive, the urge to write my own self has become the opportunity to publish my own self. Everyone now can afford to preach in the desert.

Wealth is above all an accumulation of possibilities.

The probability of finding a particular book increases in relation to the clarity of the store's focus, the diligence and shrewdness of the bookseller, and the size of the business.

Preserving everything is a form of negligence that causes a new kind of damage: the loss of what matters in a glut of the insignificant. To preserve everything is to lose everything.

Un libro no leído es un proyecto no cumplido. Tener a la vista libros no leídos es como girar cheques sin fondos: un fraude a las visitas.

Hoy, es un lujo leer a Sócrates, no por el costo de los libros, sino del tiempo escaso.

Quantity impresses, and anyone can appreciate it at first sight. Quality isn't as obvious, or as easy to appreciate. As if that weren't enough, quantity is easier to produce, less labor-intensive, cheaper, less risky than saying: Not this.

The truly cultured are capable of owning thousands of unread books without losing their composure or their desire for more.