If the library in the morning suggests an echo of the severe and reasonable wishful order of the world, the library at night seems to rejoice in the world's essential, joyful muddle.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the contrasting perspectives that a library embodies depending on the time of day, representing order and chaos in knowledge.
Alberto Manguel's quote reflects on the dual nature of libraries and, by extension, knowledge itself. During the day, libraries may symbolize clarity, order, and a structured understanding of the world, suggesting a desire for rationality and reason. Conversely, at night, they embody a sense of joy and accept the chaotic, messy reality of existence, celebrating the richness and complexity of life and learning.
In practice
This quote can be used to inspire students during a library orientation.
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.
My teacher told me I'd never amount to anything. I left high school at 15, after one year. But my real teachers were all the people around me. And I was a good listener.
When a child shows up for school, and is not physically and mentally ready to learn, he or she never catches up.
I have met 18 million youth, and each wants to be unique.
If you can't read, it's going to be hard to realize dreams.
Teach music and singing at school in such a way that it is not a torture but a joy for the pupil; instill a thirst for finer music in him, a thirst which will last for a lifetime.
Creative writing programmes are not very necessary. They just exist so that people like us can make a living.
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