In the light, we read the inventions of others; in the darkness we invent our own stories..

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..

A society can exist - many do exist - without writing, but no society can exist without reading..

Existing libraries, in their very being, seem to question the authority of those in power..

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 ….

As centuries of dictators have known, an illiterate crowd is the easiest to rule; since the craft of reading cannot be untaught once it has been acqu….

One book calls to another unexpectedly, creating alliances across different cultures and centuries..

Life happened because I turned the pages..

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

My books hold between their covers every story I've ever known and still remember, or have now forgotten, or may one day read; they fill the space ar….

Books read in a public library never have the same flavour as books read in the attic or the kitchen..

When literature is discovered, a revelation occurs: the joyful, exultant knowledge that anything can happen..

I quickly learned that reading is cumulative and proceeds by geometrical progression: each new reading builds upon whatever the reader has read befor….

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

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

At night, here in the library, the ghosts have voices..

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, ….

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 ord….

Each book was a world unto itself, and in it I took refuge..

Books may not change our suffering, books may not protect us from evil, books may not tell us what is good or what is beautiful, and they will certai….

The starting point is a question..