Quote

In a library, no empty shelf remains empty for long.

Alberto Manguel

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Alberto Manguel
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: March 13
Editor
Translator
Writer
Buenos Ayres
Alberto Manguel
Shelves
Library
Remains
Empty
Long
Shelf

More quotes by Alberto Manguel

Image
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
Image
When literature is discovered, a revelation occurs: the joyful, exultant knowledge that anything can happen.
Alberto Manguel
Image
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.
Alberto Manguel
Image
I remember, as a child, the confusion of not knowing what this place was where I was supposed to spend the night: it's a disquieting experience for a child. And what I would do was quickly unpack my books and go back to a book I knew well and make sure the same text and the same illustrations were there.
Alberto Manguel
Image
During the day, the library is a realm of order.
Alberto Manguel
Image
Each book was a world unto itself, and in it I took refuge.
Alberto Manguel
Image
Reading in bed is a self-centered act, immobile, free from ordinary social conventions, invisible to the world, and one that, because it takes place between the sheets, in the realm of lust and sinful idleness, has something of the thrill of things forbidden.
Alberto Manguel
Image
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.
Alberto Manguel
Image
At night, here in the library, the ghosts have voices.... The various qualities of my readings seem to permeate my every muscle, so that when I finally decide to turn off the library light, I carry into my sleep the voices and the movements of the book I've just closed.
Alberto Manguel
Image
The world that is a book is devoured bya reader who is a letter in the world's text thus a circular metaphor is created for the endlessness of reading We are what we read.
Alberto Manguel
Image
It is in the translation that the innocence lost after the first reading is restored under another guise, since the reader is once again faced with a new text and its attendant mystery. That is the inescapable paradox of translation, and also its wealth.
Alberto Manguel
Image
The world encyclopedia, the universal library, exists, and it is the world itself.
Alberto Manguel
Image
In our day, computer technology and the proliferation of books on CD-ROM have not affected - as far as statistics show - the production and sale of books in their old-fashioned codex form.
Alberto Manguel
Image
Unpacking books is a revelatory activity.
Alberto Manguel
Image
The telling of stories creates the real world.
Alberto Manguel
Image
Nothing moves except my eyes and my hand occasionally turning a page, and yet something not exactly defined by the word text unfurls, progresses, grows and takes root as I read. But how does this process take place?
Alberto Manguel
Image
Every library is a library of preferences, and every chosen category implies an exclusion.
Alberto Manguel
Image
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
Image
I know that something dies when i give up my books, and that my memory keeps going back to them with mournful nostalgia.
Alberto Manguel
Image
Our books will bear witness for or against us, our books reflect who we are and who we have been, our books hold the share of pages granted to us from the Book of Life. By the books we call ours we will be judged
Alberto Manguel