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

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.

A society can exist - many do exist - without writing, but no society can exist without reading.

As centuries of dictators have known, an illiterate crowd is the easiest to rule; since the craft of reading cannot be untaught once it has been acquired, the second-best recourse is to limit its scope.

Our books will bear witness for or against us, our books reflect who we are and who we have been, our books hold the share of pages granted to us from the Book of Life. By the books we call ours we will be judged

Evil requires no reason.

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