Alberto Manguel Quotes

Quotes about:

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

  Alberto Manguel

  Book, Darkness, Return

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “A Reading Diary”, p.66, Vintage Canada

  22 Copy quote

• 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 certainly not shield us from the common fate of the grave. But books grant us myriad possibilities: the possibility of change, the possibility of illumination.

  Alberto Manguel

  Beautiful, Book, Fate

  35 Copy quote

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

  Alberto Manguel

  Reading, Book, Rebirth

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.31, Vintage Canada

  51 Copy quote

• 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, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader.

  Alberto Manguel

  Confused, Book, Childhood

  11 Copy quote

• We can roam the bloated stacks of the Library of Alexandria, where all imagination and knowledge are assembled; we can recognize in its destruction the warning that all we gather will be lost, but also that much of it can be collected again; we can learn from its splendid ambition that what was one man's experience can become, through the alchemy of words, the experience of all, and how that experience, distilled once again into words, can serve each singular reader for some secret, singular purpose.

  Alberto Manguel

  Ambition, Men, Imagination

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.36, Vintage Canada

  5 Copy quote

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

  Alberto Manguel

  Reading, Progression, Reader

  Alberto Manguel (2014). “A History of Reading”, p.36, Penguin

  3 Copy quote

• Libraries, whether my own or shared with a greater reading public, have always seemed to me pleasantly mad places, and for as long as I can remember I've been seduced by their labyrinthine logic, which suggests that reason (if not art) rules over a cacophonous arrangement of books.

  Alberto Manguel

  Art, Book, Reading

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.9, Vintage Canada

  15 Copy quote

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

  Alberto Manguel

  Book, Reading, World

  Alberto Manguel (2014). “A History of Reading”, p.27, Penguin

  12 Copy quote

• In a library, no empty shelf remains empty for long.

  Alberto Manguel

  Long, Library, Empty

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.66, Vintage Canada

  6 Copy quote

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

  Alberto Manguel

  Writing, Night, Light

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.252, Vintage Canada

  8 Copy quote

• 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 wait for me till the end of my days.

  Alberto Manguel

  Book, Waiting, Feelings

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.237, Vintage Canada

  12 Copy quote

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

  Alberto Manguel

  Reading, Writing

  "A History of Reading". Book by Alberto Manguel, 1996.

  8 Copy quote

• 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 acquired, the second-best recourse is to limit its scope.

  Alberto Manguel

  Reading, Crafts, Crowds

  11 Copy quote

• 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.

  Alberto Manguel

  Order, Vision, Library

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.48, Vintage Canada

  10 Copy quote

• Life happened because I turned the pages.

  Alberto Manguel

  Inspirational, Motivational, Pages

  Alberto Manguel (2014). “A History of Reading”, p.200, Penguin

  9 Copy quote

• 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.

  Alberto Manguel

  Book, Voice, Space

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.19, Vintage Canada

  10 Copy quote

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

  Alberto Manguel

  Book, Creating, Different

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.19, Vintage Canada

  10 Copy quote

• We read to understand, or to begin to understand. We cannot do but to read. Reading almost as much as breathing, is our essential function.

  Alberto Manguel

  Reading, Breathing, Essentials

  "A History of Reading". Book by Alberto Manguel, 1996.

  5 Copy quote

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

  Alberto Manguel

  Library, Authority, Seems

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  Alberto Manguel

  Children, Book, Home

  "Conversation: Alberto Manguel". "PBS NewsHour" with Jeffrey Brown, www.pbs.org. February 19, 2010.

  11 Copy quote

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

  Alberto Manguel

  Book, Reading, Thought Provoking

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.9, Vintage Canada

  14 Copy quote

• Reading in bed is a self-centered act, immobile, free from ordinary social conventions, invisible to the world, and one that, because it takes place between the sheets, in the realm of lust and sinful idleness, has something of the thrill of things forbidden.

  Alberto Manguel

  Reading, Self, Lust

  13 Copy quote

• And sometimes, when the stars are kind, we read with an intake of breath, with a shudder, as if someone or something had 'walked over our grave,' as if a memory had suddenly been rescued from a place deep within us - the recognition of something we never knew was there, or of something we vaguely felt as a flicker or a shadow, whose ghostly form rises and passes back into us before we can see what it is, leaving us older and wiser.

  Alberto Manguel

  Stars, Memories, Leaving

  9 Copy quote

• Something about the possession of a book - an object that can contain infinite fables, words of wisdom, chronicles of times gone by, humorous anecdotes and divine revelation - endows the reader with the power of creating a story, and the listener with a sense of being present at the moment of creation.

  Alberto Manguel

  Book, Humorous, Creating

  "A History of Reading". Book by Alberto Manguel, 1996.

  9 Copy quote

• Deserted libraries hold the shades of writers who worked within, and are haunted by their absence.

  Alberto Manguel

  Library, Shade, Absence

  10 Copy quote

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