Alberto Manguel Quotes: 27

• At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book—that string of confused, alien ciphers—shivered into meaning. Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader.

  A History of Reading

• Maybe this is why we read, and why in moments of darkness we return to books: to find words for what we already know.

  A Reading Diary: A Passionate Reader's Reflections on a Year of Books

• Books may not change our suffering, books may not protect us from evil, books may not tell us what is good or what is beautiful, and they will certainly not shield us from the common fate of the grave. But books grant us myriad possibilities: the possibility of change, the possibility of illumination.

• Each book was a world unto itself, and in it I took refuge.

  A History of Reading

• I wanted to live among books.

  A History of Reading

• In my fool hardy youth, when my friends were dreaming of heroic deeds in the realms of engineering and law, finance and national politics, I dreamt of becoming a librarian.

  The Library at Night

• 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 reach, 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.

• Every reader exists to ensure for a certain book a modest immortality. Reading is, in this sense, a ritual of rebirth.

  The Library at Night

• I don't remember ever feeling lonely; in fact, on the rare occasions when I met other children I found their games and their talk far less interesting than the adventures and dialogues I read in my books.

  A History of Reading

• Ultimately, the number of books always exceeds the space they are granted.

  The Library at Night

• 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.

  The Library at Night

• Our society accepts the book as a given, but the act of reading -- once considered useful and important, as well as potentially dangerous and subversive -- is now condescendingly accepted as a pastime, a slow pastime that lacks efficiency and does not contribute to the common good.

  The Library at Night

• My books hold between their covers every story I've ever known and still remember, or have now forgotten, or may one day read; they fill the space around me with ancient and new voices.

  The Library at Night

• I have no feelings of guilt regarding the books I have not read and perhaps will never read; I know that my books have unlimited patience. They will wait for me till the end of my days.

  The Library at Night

• 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.

  The Library at Night

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

  The Library at Night

• Unpacking books is a revelatory activity.

  The Library at Night

• Readers are bullied in schoolyards and in locker-rooms as much as in government offices and prisons.

  A History of Reading

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

  The Library at Night

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

  The Library at Night

• Old books that we have known but not possessed cross our path and invite themselves over. New books try to seduce us daily with tempting titles and tantalizing covers.

  The Library at Night

• Digestion of words as well; I often read aloud to myself in my writing corner in the library, where no one can hear me, for the sake of better savouring the text, so as to make it all the more mine.

  The Library at Night

• One book calls to another unexpectedly, creating alliances across different cultures and centuries.

  The Library at Night

• 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.

  The Library at Night

• 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.

  The Library at Night

• There is a line of poetry, a sentence in a fable, a word in an essay, by which my existence is justified; find that line, and immortality is assured.

  The Library at Night

• If justice takes place, there may be hope, even in the face of a seemingly capricious divinity.

  The Library at Night