There Is A Great Line Of Women

What Is Charm Then? The Free Giving Of A Grace, The Spending Of Something Given By Nature In Her Role Of Spendthrift ... Something Extra, Superfluous, Unnecessary, Essentially A Power Thrown Away.

With A Library You Are Free, Not Confined By Temporary Political Climates. It Is The Most Democratic Of Institutions Because No One - But No One At All - Can Tell You What To Read And When And How.

You Have To Be Grown Up, Really Grown Up, Not Merely In Years, To Understand Your Parents.

This Is A Time When It Is Frightening To Be Alive, When It Is Hard To Think Of Human Beings As Rational Creatures. Everywhere We Look We See Brutality, Stupidity, Until It Seems That There Is Nothing Else To Be Seen But That--a Descent Into Barbarism, Everywhere, Which We Are Unable To Check. But I Think That While It Is True There Is A General Worsening, It Is Precisely Because Things Are So Frightening We Become Hypnotized, And Do Not Notice--or If We Notice, Belittle--equally Strong Forces On The Other Side, The Forces, In Short, Of Reason, Sanity And Civilization.

A Public Library Is The Most Democratic Thing In The World. What Can Be Found There Has Undone Dictators And Tyrants: Demagogues Can Persecute Writers And Tell Them What To Write As Much As They Like, But They Cannot Vanish What Has Been Written In The Past, Though They Try Often Enough...people Who Love Literature Have At Least Part Of Their Minds Immune From Indoctrination. If You Read, You Can Learn To Think For Yourself.