I Know That Something Dies When I

From Fire, Water, The Passage Of Time, Neglectful Readers, And The Hand Of The Censor, Each Of My Books Has Escaped To Tell Me Its Story.

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.

It Has Always Been My Experience That, Whatever Groupings I Choose For My Books, The Space In Which I Plan To Lodge Them Necessarily Reshapes My Choice And, More Important, In No Time Proves Too Small For Them And Forces Me To Change My Arrangement. In A Library, No Empty Shelf Remains Empty For Long. Like Nature, Libraries Abhor A Vacuum, And The Problem Of Space Is Inherent In The Very Nature Of Any Collection Of Books.

Ordered By Subject, By Importance, Ordered According To Whether The Book Was Penned By God Or By One Of God's Creatures, Ordered Alphabetically Or By Numbers Or By The Language In Which The Text Is Written, Every Library Translates The Chaos Of Discovery And Creation Into A Structured System Of Hierarchies Or A Rampage Of Free Associations.

Readers, Censors Know, Are Defined By The Books They Read.