The love of libraries, like most loves, must be learned.

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.

Our society accepts the book as a given, but the act of reading -- once considered useful and important, as well as potentially dangerous and subversive -- is now condescendingly accepted as a pastime, a slow pastime that lacks efficiency and does not contribute to the common good.

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.

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

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

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