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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

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Alberto Manguel
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: March 13
Editor
Translator
Writer
Buenos Ayres
Alberto Manguel
World
Remains
Outside
Existence
Books
Lit
Space
Disappears
Night
Lamps
Book
Disappear
Nothing
Library

More quotes by Alberto Manguel

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It hardly matters why a library is destroyed: every banning, curtailment, shredding, plunder or loot gives rise (at least as a ghostly presence) to a louder, clearer, more durable library of the banned, looted, plundered, shredded or curtailed.
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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.
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Every reader has found charms by which to secure possession of a page that, by magic, becomes as if never read before, fresh and immaculate.
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Ultimately, the number of books always exceeds the space they are granted.
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Darkness promotes speech.
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If the book is second-hand, I leave all its markings intact, the spoor of previous readers, fellow-travellers who have recorded their passage by means of scribbled comments, a name on the fly-leaf, a bus ticket to mark a certain page.
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This morning I looked at the books on my shelves and thought that they have no knowledge of my existence. They come to life because I open them and turn their pages, and yet they don't know that I am their reader.
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Reading is the occupation of the insomniac par excellence.
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Readers, censors know, are defined by the books they read.
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In every literate society, learning to read is something of an initiation, a ritualized passage out of a state of dependency and rudimentary communication.
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All these are readers, and their gestures, their craft, the pleasure, the responsibility and the power they derive from reading, are common with mine. I am not alone.
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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.
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Unpacking books is a revelatory activity.
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Existing libraries, in their very being, seem to question the authority of those in power.
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As readers, we are seldom interested in the fine sentiments of a lesson learnt we seldom care about the good manners of morals. Repentance puts an end to conversation forgiveness becomes the stuff of moralistic tracts. Revenge - bloodthirsty, justice-hungry revenge - is the very essence of romance, lying at the heart of much of the best fiction.
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The listeners who buy books after a reading multiply that reading the author who realizes that he or she may be writing on a blank page but is at least not speaking to a blank wall may be encouraged by the experience, and write more.
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The association of books with their readers is unlike any other between objects and their users.
Alberto Manguel
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A library is an ever-growing entity it multiples seemingly unaided, it reproduces itself by purchase, theft, borrowings, gifts, by suggesting gaps through association, by demanding completion of sorts.
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Every library is a library of preferences, and every chosen category implies an exclusion.
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I've never really understood attachment to a place for reasons of birth. That my mother happened to give birth to me in a certain place doesn't, to my mind, justify any thankfulness towards that place. It could have been anywhere.
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