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.

Unicorns, dragons, witches may be creatures conjured up in dreams, but on the page their needs, joys, anguishes, and redemptions should be just as true as those of Madame Bovary or Martin Chuzzlewit.

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.

If the library in the morning suggests an echo of the severe and reasonable wishful order of the world, the library at night seems to rejoice in the world's essential, joyful muddle.

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.

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

Entering a library, I am always stuck by the way in which a certain vision of the world is imposed upon the reader through its categories and its order.