Karin Slaughter Quotes

Random House is definitely invested in keeping libraries healthy.

The way we've been neglecting to support our libraries throughout the country is a shame.

I don't want to see libraries close; I want to find local solutions that will make them sustainable.

As a big user of public libraries, I deplore the cutbacks they have had to sustain.

Library campaigners are not prepared to stand by and watch something they cherish be dismantled brick by brick.

Andrew Carnegie loved libraries; he knew their importance to an educated society and as anchors to our communities. And so, just as some loyal baseball fans travel to attend games at all 30 major league stadiums, over the last decade or so, I have slowly, casually, visited Carnegie libraries whenever I am on the road.

I have encountered those who feel that libraries have served their purpose and are no longer needed. There are those who consider them a soft target when it comes to local authority budget cuts. In certain political quarters, there is a refusal to see that our public library service needs active protection.

The librarian must be the librarian militant before he can be the librarian triumphant.

I've been talking about the centrality of libraries in our information society for a while now.

Support your libraries... or else!

As voters and taxpayers, we must demand that our local governments properly prioritize libraries. As citizens, we must invest in our library down the street so that the generations served by that library grow up to be adults who contribute not just to their local communities but to the world.

I talk to a lot of librarians, and there's always a steady drumbeat of how libraries are places of community. But a lot of them have also recently - and just in the nick of time - refurbished, because during this economic downturn, people have a tendency to borrow instead of buy.

The big hurdle is going out and raising the revenue. There's no doubt about that; it's an uphill battle.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has liberally provided a way in which every town may have a collection of books free to all. So successfully has the enactment been carried out that only three per cent of the State’s population is unprovided with a free public library, and this remnant will soon be favored with its public stock of standard books.

It's still National Library Week. You should be especially nice to a librarian today, or tomorrow. Sometime this week, anyway. Probably the librarians would like tea. Or chocolates. Or a reliable source of funding.

I have always had a special affinity for libraries and librarians, for the most obvious reasons. I love books. (One of my first Jobs was shelving books at a branch of the Chicago Public Library.) Libraries are a pillar of any society. I believe our lack of attention to funding and caring for them properly in the United States has a direct bearing on problems of literacy, productivity, and our inability to compete in today's world. Libraries are everyman's free university.

Our concern for the future can be tested by how well we support our libraries.

When, President Bush asks me to go with his father to the Tsunami impacted areas and help raise money, I was thrilled to do that, because I think we have to always keep looking for common ground.

I think, charitable foundations are, in general, a good thing.

I was really running a music school back then, because my band wasn't making any money. I keep talking about money, because most people don't understand the part of money in running a band.

I don't believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.

I think that we need to measure how we give dollars to libraries by need. And the communities that are poor, in my opinion, should get more because you have to do more outreach.

Now it's a hard time in every business with the current economic situation, so being an actor where you're seen in different parts of the world is gold because it means that people in other countries will hopefully see your movies and like them, which means more money to make other movies. It's a hard time in movie making.

The only people who have never had a problem with me speaking in their venues are independent bookstores and libraries. Universities and humanities councils have canceled me, but never an independent bookstore.

No matter how big and powerful government gets, and the many services it provides, it can never take the place of volunteers.