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

Unpacking books is a revelatory activity.

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

But a reader's ambition knows no bounds.

I always knew that I wanted to live with books, even as a child, because we traveled a lot. Home was the book to which I came back every evening.

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.

Ordered by subject, by importance, ordered according to whether the book was penned by God or by one of God's creatures, ordered alphabetically or by numbers or by the language in which the text is written, every library translates the chaos of discovery and creation into a structured system of hierarchies or a rampage of free associations.