Man's real genius and knowledge remains preserved in books
A library is a feast to which we are all invited.
To my mind there is nothing so beautiful or so provocative as a secondhand book store...To me it is astonishing and miraculous to think that any one of us can poke among the stalls for something to read overnight--and that this something may be the sum of a lifetime of sweat, tears, and genius that some poor, struggling, blessed fellow expended trying to teach us the truth.
There would be more genuine rejoicing at the discovery of a complete new novel by Jane Austen than any other literary discovery, short of a new major play by Shakespeare.
In the houses of the humble a little library in my opinion is a most precious possession.
My fingers positively itched to drift at length along their spines, to arrive at one whose lure I could not pass, to pluck it down, to inch it open, then to close my eyes and inhale the soul-sparking scent of old and literate dust.
I'm filled with admiration, delight, and gratitude at discovering James Lasdun's poems in A Jump Start. He has wit, speed, intelligence, a keen eye, precision, and imagination of a high order.
Here is the treasure chest of the world - the public library, or a bookstore.
I have 'To Kill A Mockingbird' signed by Harper Lee. That is my prized possession.
I have a couple of thousand books in my personal library. Choosing a favorite is next to impossible. But I do love the written word.
America should treasure its rare, true original voices and Mark Leyner is one of them. So treasure him already, you bastards!
American poetry is this country's greatest patrimony. It takes a stranger to see some things clearly. This is one of them, and I am that stranger.
Lovers of literature will look for the remains of the golden treasure in that shipwreck on the bottom of the sea of criticism.
The great British Library --an immense collection of volumes of all ages and languages, many of which are now forgotten, and most of which are seldom read: one of these sequestered pools of obsolete literature to which modern authors repair, and draw buckets full of classic lore, or pure English, undefiled wherewith to swell their own scanty rills of thought.
Time the great destroyer of other men's happiness, only enlarges the patrimony of literature to its possessor.
library is a beautiful old thing
The sacred books of all the world are worthless dross and common stones compared with Shakespeare's glittering gold and gleaming gems.
Maybe there is no better novel in the world than Denton Welch's In Youth Is Pleasure. Just holding it in my hands, so precious, so beyond gay, so deliciously subversive, is enough to make illiteracy a worse social crime than hunger.
The 'Robben Island Bible' has arrived at the British Museum. It's a garish thing, its cover plastered with pink and gold Hindu images, designed to hide its contents. Within is the finest collection of words generated by human intelligence: the complete works of William Shakespeare.
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.
