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Reality deals in specifics under the guise of generalities. Literature does the contrary.

Alberto Manguel

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Alberto Manguel
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: March 13
Editor
Translator
Writer
Buenos Ayres
Alberto Manguel
Literature
Reality
Doe
Specifics
Generalities
Guise
Contrary
Deals

More quotes by Alberto Manguel

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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
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A writer stops writing the moment he or she puts the last full stop to their text, and at that point the book is in limbo and doesn't come to life until the reader picks it up and the reader flips the pages.
Alberto Manguel
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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
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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.
Alberto Manguel
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Readers are bullied in schoolyards and in locker-rooms as much as in government offices and prisons.
Alberto Manguel
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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
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There is a line of poetry, a sentence in a fable, a word in an essay, by which my existence is justified find that line, and immortality is assured.
Alberto Manguel
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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
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As readers, we have gone from learning a precious craft whose secret was held by a jealous few, to taking for granted a skin that has become subordinate to principles of mindless financial profit or mechanical efficiency, a skill for which governments care almost nothing.
Alberto Manguel
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The love of libraries, like most loves, must be learned.
Alberto Manguel
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We seem to live a culture that doesn't want blemishes. The vision of most beautiful models... airbrushed in order to be seen as perfect, infects our notion of how literature should be written.
Alberto Manguel
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A book brings its own history to the reader.
Alberto Manguel
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A society can exist - many do exist - without writing, but no society can exist without reading.
Alberto Manguel
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The readers who commited suicide after reading 'Werther' were not ideal but merely sentimental readers.
Alberto Manguel
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In a library, no empty shelf remains empty for long.
Alberto Manguel
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Readers, censors know, are defined by the books they read.
Alberto Manguel
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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.
Alberto Manguel
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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.
Alberto Manguel
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Ultimately, the number of books always exceeds the space they are granted.
Alberto Manguel
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As we read a text in our own language, the text itself becomes a barrier.
Alberto Manguel