A library is an ever-growing entity; it multiples seemingly unaided, it reproduces itself by purchase, theft, borrowings, gifts, by suggesting gaps through association, by demanding completion of sorts.
Interpretation
A library continuously expands and evolves through various means, including acquiring books and inspiring learning.
Alberto Manguel's quote highlights the dynamic and self-sustaining nature of libraries. They grow not just through the purchase of new books but also through donations, loans, and the connections made between texts. This reflects the idea that a library is not just a static collection of resources but a living entity that stimulates curiosity and knowledge, adapting to the needs and contributions of its community.
In practice
During a speech at a community event about the importance of libraries.
The stories that unfold in the space of a writer's study, the objects chosen to watch over a desk, the books selected to sit on the shelves, all weave a web of echoes and reflections of meanings and affections, that lend a visitor the illusion that something of the owner of this space lives on between these walls, even if the owner is no more.
From fire, water, the passage of time, neglectful readers, and the hand of the censor, each of my books has escaped to tell me its story.
One book calls to another unexpectedly, creating alliances across different cultures and centuries.
It has always been my experience that, whatever groupings I choose for my books, the space in which I plan to lodge them necessarily reshapes my choice and, more important, in no time proves too small for them and forces me to change my arrangement. In a library, no empty shelf remains empty for long. Like Nature, libraries abhor a vacuum, and the problem of space is inherent in the very nature of any collection of books.
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 around me with ancient and new voices.
A society can exist - many do exist - without writing, but no society can exist without reading.
It is so important that British children are taught about the World Wars that their great grandparents fought in and lived through. It was a terrifying time.
Before you sleep, read something that is exquisite, and worth remembering.
Immerse yourself in the curriculum of grace.
We have a large public that is very ignorant about public affairs and very susceptible to simplistic slogans by candidates who appear out of nowhere, have no track record, but mouth appealing slogans
We cannot afford to lose talented young black people, who make it to university, overseas, or worse, to let other talented black people be put off by the notion that university is somehow not for them.
Children are not simply commodities to be herded into line and trained for the jobs that white people who live in segregated neighborhoods have available.
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