Alberto Manguel Quotes About Books

Quotes about: Books

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• The shelves of books we haven't written, like those of books we haven't read, stretches out into the darkness of the universal library's farthest space. We are always at the beginning of the beginning of the letter A.

  Alberto Manguel

  Book, Space, Darkness

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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• We can imagine the books we'd like to read, even if they have not yet been written, and we can imagine libraries full of books we would like to possess, even if they are well beyond our reacher, because we enjoy dreaming up a library that reflects every one of our interests and every one of our foibles--a library that, in its variety and complexity, fully reflects the reader we are.

  Alberto Manguel

  Dream, Book, Library

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.273, Vintage Canada

• I like to imagine that, on the day after my last, my library and I will crumble together, so that even when I am no more I'll still be with my books.

  Alberto Manguel

  Book, Library, Together

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.39, Vintage Canada

• 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

• But at night, when the library lamps are lit, the outside world disappears and nothing but the space of books remains in existence.

  Alberto Manguel

  Book, Night, Space

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.17, Vintage Canada

• I wanted to live among books.

  Alberto Manguel

  Book, Wanted

• I don't remember ever feeling lonely; in fact, on the rare occasions when I met other children I found their games and their talk far less interesting than the adventures and dialogues I read in my books.

  Alberto Manguel

  Lonely, Children, Book

• Our society accepts the book as a given, but the act of reading -- once considered useful and important, as well as potentially dangerous and subversive -- is now condescendingly accepted as a pastime, a slow pastime that lacks efficiency and does not contribute to the common good.

  Alberto Manguel

  Book, Reading, Important

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.209, Vintage Canada

• Readers, censors know, are defined by the books they read.

  Alberto Manguel

  Book, Reader, Knows

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.123, Vintage Canada

• Unpacking books is a revelatory activity.

  Alberto Manguel

  Book, Unpacking, Activity

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.43, Vintage Canada

• Old books that we have known but not possessed cross our path and invite themselves over. New books try to seduce us daily with tempting titles and tantalizing covers.

  Alberto Manguel

  Book, Trying, Path

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.67, Vintage Canada

• 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

• In the dark, with the windows lit and the rows of books glittering, the library is a closed space, a universe of self-serving rules that pretend to replace or translate those of the shapeless universe beyond.

  Alberto Manguel

  Book, Dark, Space

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.17, Vintage Canada

• 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.

  Alberto Manguel

  Book, Fire, Hands

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.220, Vintage Canada

• 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.

  Alberto Manguel

  Wall, Book, Reflection

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.175, Vintage Canada

• In any of my pages in any of my books may life a perfect account of my secret experience of the world.

  Alberto Manguel

  Book, Perfect, Secret

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