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.

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 telling of stories creates the real world.

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.

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.

Most readers, then and now, have at some time experienced the humiliation of being told that their occupation is reprehensible.

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