Ultimately, The Number Of Books Always Exceeds

Books May Not Change Our Suffering, Books May Not Protect Us From Evil, Books May Not Tell Us What Is Good Or What Is Beautiful, And They Will Certainly Not Shield Us From The Common Fate Of The Grave. But Books Grant Us Myriad Possibilities: The Possibility Of Change, The Possibility Of Illumination.

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.

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.

At Different Times And In Different Places I Have Come To Expect Certain Books To Look A Certain Way, And, As In All Fashions, These Changing Features Fix A Precise Quality Onto A Book's Definition. I Judge A Book By Its Cover; I Judge A Book By Its Shape.

I Know My Time Will Come Soon Enough, But I Will Not Dwell On It. What Is The Purpose? We Might As Well Dwell On The Work Of Our Teeth Or On The Mechanics Of Our Walk. It Is There, It Will Always Be There, And I Don't Intend To Spend My Glorious Hours Looking Over My Shoulder To See Death's Icy Face.