Alberto Manguel Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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

  36 Copy quote

• 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

  23 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

  52 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

  12 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

  13 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

  14 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

  16 Copy quote

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

  Alberto Manguel

  Literature, Joyful, Revelations

  Alberto Manguel (1983). “Black water: the book of fantastic literature”, Three Rivers Press

  6 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

  4 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

  9 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

  11 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.

  9 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.

  7 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

  13 Copy quote

• I never talked to anyone about my reading; the need to share came afterwords.

  Alberto Manguel

  Reading, Needs, Share

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

  6 Copy quote

• Life happened because I turned the pages.

  Alberto Manguel

  Inspirational, Motivational, Pages

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

  10 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

  15 Copy quote

• Socrates affirmed that only that which the reader already knows can be sparked by a reading, and that the knowledge cannot be acquired through dead letters.

  Alberto Manguel

  Reading, Letters, Reader

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

  7 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

  6 Copy quote

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

  Alberto Manguel

  Book, Kitchen, Library

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

  7 Copy quote

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

  Alberto Manguel

  Night, Voice, Library

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

  7 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

  11 Copy quote

• Ultimately, the number of books always exceeds the space they are granted.

  Alberto Manguel

  Book, Space, Numbers

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.68, Vintage Canada

  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

  11 Copy quote

• To say that an author is a reader or a reader an author, to see a book as a human being or a human being a book, to describe the world as text or a text as the world, are ways of naming the readers craft.

  Alberto Manguel

  Book, World, Crafts

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

  14 Copy quote

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