If Every Library Is In Some Sense

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.

And Sometimes, When The Stars Are Kind, We Read With An Intake Of Breath, With A Shudder, As If Someone Or Something Had 'walked Over Our Grave,' As If A Memory Had Suddenly Been Rescued From A Place Deep Within Us - The Recognition Of Something We Never Knew Was There, Or Of Something We Vaguely Felt As A Flicker Or A Shadow, Whose Ghostly Form Rises And Passes Back Into Us Before We Can See What It Is, Leaving Us Older And Wiser.

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.

I Always Knew That I Wanted To Live With Books, Even As A Child, Because We Traveled A Lot. Home Was The Book To Which I Came Back Every Evening.

If Every Library Is In Some Sense A Reflection Of Its Readers, It Is Also An Image Of That Which We Are Not, And Cannot Be.