Quote

Books read in a public library never have the same flavour as books read in the attic or the kitchen.

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
Library
Public
Books
Read
Book
Attic
Never
Attics
Flavour
Kitchen

More quotes by Alberto Manguel

Image
The readers who commited suicide after reading 'Werther' were not ideal but merely sentimental readers.
Alberto Manguel
Image
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
Image
In the light, we read the inventions of others in the darkness we invent our own stories.
Alberto Manguel
Image
It used to be that readers were relegated because they considered themselves far above society, and so the metaphor of the ivory tower developed. Now there's still this idea that the reader doesn't take part in the social game and in politics, the res publica, but for other reasons: he doesn't do it because he's not making any money.
Alberto Manguel
Image
But a reader's ambition knows no bounds.
Alberto Manguel
Image
In any of my pages in any of my books may life a perfect account of my secret experience of the world.
Alberto Manguel
Image
Most readers, then and now, have at some time experienced the humiliation of being told that their occupation is reprehensible.
Alberto Manguel
Image
The American psychologist Julian Jaynes, in a controversial study on the origin of consciousness, argued that the bicameral mind - in which one of the hemispheres becomes specialized in silent reading - is a late development in humankind's evolution, and that the process by which this function develops is still changing.
Alberto Manguel
Image
Not until I came to Canada did I realize that snow was a four-letter word.
Alberto Manguel
Image
The love of libraries, like most loves, must be learned.
Alberto Manguel
Image
In my fool hardy youth, when my friends were dreaming of heroic deeds in the realms of engineering and law, finance and national politics, I dreamt of becoming a librarian.
Alberto Manguel
Image
Evil requires no reason.
Alberto Manguel
Image
Our society accepts the book as a given, but the act of reading -- once considered useful and important, as well as potentially dangerous and subversive -- is now condescendingly accepted as a pastime, a slow pastime that lacks efficiency and does not contribute to the common good.
Alberto Manguel
Image
Each book was a world unto itself, and in it I took refuge.
Alberto Manguel
Image
I wanted to live among books.
Alberto Manguel
Image
Unicorns, dragons, witches may be creatures conjured up in dreams, but on the page their needs, joys, anguishes, and redemptions should be just as true as those of Madame Bovary or Martin Chuzzlewit.
Alberto Manguel
Image
In every literate society, learning to read is something of an initiation, a ritualized passage out of a state of dependency and rudimentary communication.
Alberto Manguel
Image
I don't remember ever feeling lonely in fact, on the rare occasions when I met other children I found their games and their talk far less interesting than the adventures and dialogues I read in my books.
Alberto Manguel
Image
Reading is the occupation of the insomniac par excellence.
Alberto Manguel
Image
Deadlines comes as a surprise....superb: a new genre, in fact, combining the pleasures of list-making with that of last-minute eaves-dropping.
Alberto Manguel