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d4983d2
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We are losing our common vocabulary, built over thousands of years to help and delight and instruct us, for the sake of what we take to be the new technology's virtues.
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words
vocabulary
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Alberto Manguel |
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c1996fe
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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.
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library
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Alberto Manguel |
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605db4c
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Our books will bear witness for or against us, our books reflect who we are and who we have been, our books hold the share of pages granted to us from the Book of Life. By the books we call ours we will be judged
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Alberto Manguel |
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fb45d59
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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.
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Alberto Manguel |
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ec1080c
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Evil requires no reason.
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Alberto Manguel |
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6f1681b
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kntu 'sm`h fy r'sy l'sTr lswd wlfrGt lbyDlmwjwd@ byn l'sTr tHwlt fj'@ l~ m`nin dht yq` wfy Hwr Smt mmlw blHtrm t`rfn b`Dn l~ b`D ... wm n tmkntu mn rbT l`lmt lswd lnHyl@ b`Dh m` b`D wtHwylh l~ Hqy'q Hy@
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Alberto Manguel |
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d872c1d
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The starting point is a question.
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Alberto Manguel |
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91e4357
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Unicorns, dragons, witches may be creatures conjured up in dreams, but on the page their needs, joys, anguishes, and redemptions should be just as true as those of Madame Bovary or Martin Chuzzlewit.
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writing
genre
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Alberto Manguel |
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96b4b47
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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.
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libraries
reading
stories
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Alberto Manguel |
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d620aec
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A library is an ever-growing entity; it multiples seemingly unaided, it reproduces itself by purchase, theft, borrowings, gifts, by suggesting gaps through association, by demanding completion of sorts.
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library
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Alberto Manguel |
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18bded4
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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.
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reading
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Alberto Manguel |
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cbdb451
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Deserted libraries hold the shades of writers who worked within, and are haunted by their absence.
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writers
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Alberto Manguel |
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7b1ed9c
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If the library in the morning suggests an echo of the severe and reasonable wishful order of the world, the library at night seems to rejoice in the world's essential, joyful muddle.
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library
world
order
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Alberto Manguel |
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a6eaeab
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lHSyl@ hy 'n lqry' wlktb ySbHn wHd@wHd@ l`lm kktb yulthm mn lqry' ldhy hw bdwrh Hrf fy nS l`lm
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Alberto Manguel |
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af618ad
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The power of readers lies not in their ability to gather information, in their ordering and cataloguing capability, but in their gift to interpret, associate and transform their reading.
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Alberto Manguel |
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e7f8450
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llHH llHSwl `l~ ktb wtmlkh hw nw` mn lshhw@ lty l ymkn mqrnth b'y shhw@ 'khr~.
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Alberto Manguel |
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e63af64
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In any of my pages in any of my books may life a perfect account of my secret experience of the world.
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world
books
secret
pages
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Alberto Manguel |
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6395f81
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Entering a library, I am always stuck by the way in which a certain vision of the world is imposed upon the reader through its categories and its order.
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library
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Alberto Manguel |
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9cf9c0b
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shyy' m ymwt fy dkhly `ndm 'stGny `n ktby.
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Alberto Manguel |
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fef39ca
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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.
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words
literature
reading
recognition
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Alberto Manguel |
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426fafa
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fy Hd~ lmnsbt sy'l lHkhm lyfy sHq 'Hd kbr m`lmy lHsydyyn fy lqrn lthmn `shr `n sbb Gyb lSfH@ l'wl~ mn jmy` bHwth ltlmwd lbbly mm ydf` lqry' l~ mbshr@ lqr@ blSfH@ lthny@. 'jb: (`l~ lrGm mn kthr@ qrt lmr, `lyh 'l yns~ 'bd 'nh lm ySl b`d l~ lSfH@ l'wl~
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Alberto Manguel |
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30f7c60
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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.
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Alberto Manguel |
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5a19737
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As readers, we have gone from learning a precious craft whose secret was held by a jealous few, to taking for granted a skin that has become subordinate to principles of mindless financial profit or mechanical efficiency, a skill for which governments care almost nothing.
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reading
government
reader
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Alberto Manguel |
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d7cf458
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This morning I looked at the books on my shelves and thought that they have no knowledge of my existence. They come to life because I open them and turn their pages, and yet they don't know that I am their reader.
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Alberto Manguel |
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84a1885
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The thing is, I don't know if these stories he was telling were mine, or his, or someone else's. You spend your life among words, listening, making sense out of what you say and out of what you imagine other people are saying to you, believing that something in particular happened like this or that, as a result of this or that, with these or those consequences. But it is never so simple, is it? I suppose that if we read about ourselves in a..
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Alberto Manguel |
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a4e2ed2
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During the day, the library is a realm of order.
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order
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Alberto Manguel |
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73c4d61
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nHn m nqrw'h.
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Alberto Manguel |
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f37c0e2
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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.
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living
death
living-well
fear-of-death
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Alberto Manguel |
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12c31ba
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No one stepping for the first time into a room made of books can know instinctively how to behave, what is expected, what is promised, what is allowed. One may be overcome by horror--at the cluster or the vastness, the stillness, the mocking reminder of everything one doesn't know, the surveillance--and some of that overwhelming feeling may cling on, even after the rituals and conventions are learned, the geography mapped, and the natives f..
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libraries
library
books
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Alberto Manguel |
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6fa936f
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'm lGryb fy l'mr fhw 'nn l nnqT` 'bdan `n mmrs@ f`l lqr@ `l~ lrGm mn 'nn l nmlk tfsyran mrDyan lm nf`lh
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Alberto Manguel |
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0598558
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As readers, we are seldom interested in the fine sentiments of a lesson learnt; we seldom care about the good manners of morals. Repentance puts an end to conversation; forgiveness becomes the stuff of moralistic tracts. Revenge - bloodthirsty, justice-hungry revenge - is the very essence of romance, lying at the heart of much of the best fiction.
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revenge
romance
repentance
forgiveness
readers
morals
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Alberto Manguel |
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571a431
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lys ldy 'y sh`wr bldhnb bsh'n lktb lty lm qr'h wrbm ln qr'h 'bdan, f'n '`rf b'n ktby ldyh Sbr l Hdwd lh
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Alberto Manguel |
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8280829
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Every reader has found charms by which to secure possession of a page that, by magic, becomes as if never read before, fresh and immaculate.
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reading
page
reader
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Alberto Manguel |
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4d5bdb4
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If justice takes place, there may be hope, even in the face of a seemingly capricious divinity.
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hope
justice
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Alberto Manguel |
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96ce807
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As any reader knows, a printed page creates its own reading space, its own physical landscape in which the texture of the paper, the colour of the ink, the view of the whole ensemble acquire in the reader's hands specific meanings that lend tone and context to the words.
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Alberto Manguel |
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3a053d8
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Books have long been instruments of the divinatory arts.
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Alberto Manguel |
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bacf8a4
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l'mkn lmrb`@ tshml w tHll, l'mkn ldy'ry@ tqtrH lstmrry@.
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Alberto Manguel |
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12386c7
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The existence of any library, even mine, allows readers a sense of what their craft is truly about, a craft that struggles against the stringencies of time by bringing fragments of the past into their present. It grants them a glimpse, however secret or distant, into the minds of other human beings, and allows them a certain knowledge of their own condition through the stories stored here for their perusal. Above all, it tells readers that ..
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Alberto Manguel |
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8974ec8
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yZhr hdh fy 'n nfs lSfH@ mn lktb tdf` 'Hd lqr l~ ltshkk fy `qlh wlqry' lakhr llDHk
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Alberto Manguel |
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fefc99e
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l ykfy Hqq lHq bl`dl, w nm yjb 'n ykwn dhlk `l~ mr'~ mn lns
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Alberto Manguel |
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3a70a56
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Over the years, my experience, my tastes, my prejudices have changed: as the days go by, my memory keeps reshelving, cataloguing, discarding the volumes in my library, my words and my world - except for a few constant landmarks - are never one and the same. Heraclitus's bon mot about time applies equally well to my reading: "You never dip into the same book twice."
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Alberto Manguel |
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a813847
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We can live in a society founded on the book and yet not read, or we can live in a society where the book is merely an accessory and be, in the deepest, truest sense, a reader.
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Alberto Manguel |
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08275af
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The world encyclopedia, the universal library, exists, and it is the world itself.
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library
world
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Alberto Manguel |
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5890cfd
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Immaterial as water, too vast for any mortal apprehension, the Web's outstanding qualities allow us to confuse the ungraspable with the eternal.
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internet
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Alberto Manguel |