The Starting Point Is A Question.

The Love Of Libraries, Like Most Loves, Must Be Learned.

All These Are Readers, And Their Gestures, Their Craft, The Pleasure, The Responsibility And The Power They Derive From Reading, Are Common With Mine. I Am Not Alone.

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.

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.

If The Book Is Second-hand, I Leave All Its Markings Intact, The Spoor Of Previous Readers, Fellow-travellers Who Have Recorded Their Passage By Means Of Scribbled Comments, A Name On The Fly-leaf, A Bus Ticket To Mark A Certain Page.