...We're allotted a little space on earth and that we survive in that wilderness that can take back what it has given, as easily as blowing its breath on us or sending the sea to tell us we are not so big. When we forget how close the wilderness is in the night, my grandpa said, someday it will come in and get us, for we will have forgotten how terrible and real it can be.

Recreate the world in your own image and make it better for your having been here.

You must live feverishly in a library. Colleges are not going to do any good unless you are raised and live in a library everyday of your life.

In order for a thing to be horrible it has to suffer a change you can recognize.

Orwell was dealing with communism and his disillusionment with communism in Russia and what he saw the communists do in Spain. His novel was a response to those political situations. Whereas I was interested in more things than the political atmosphere. I was considering the whole social atmosphere: the impact of TV and radio and the lack of education. I could see the coming event of schoolteachers not teaching reading anymore. The less they taught, the more you wouldn't need books.

Everything is generated through your own will power.

Libraries are the center of our lives. There's no use going to a university if you don't live at the library.