At night, here in the library, the ghosts have voices.

Unpacking books is a revelatory activity.

The telling of stories creates the real world.

All these are readers, and their gestures, their craft, the pleasure, the responsibility and the power they derive from reading, are common with mine. I am not alone.

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.

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

Not until I came to Canada did I realize that snow was a four-letter word.