Alberto Manguel Quotes

Like Petrach's, my books know infinitely more than I do, and I'm grateful that they even tolerate my presence. At times I feel that I abuse the privilege.

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.

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.

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.

We read in slow, long motions, as if drifting in space, weightless. We read full of prejudice, malignantly. We read generously, making excuses for the text, filling gaps, mending faults. And sometimes, when the stars are kind, we read with an intake of breath, with a shudder... as if a memory had suddenly been rescued from a place deep within us--the recognition of something we never knew was there...

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.

Ultimately, the number of books always exceeds the space they are granted.

I don't remember ever feeling lonely; in fact, on the rare occasions when I met other children I found their games and their talk far less interesting than the adventures and dialogues I read in my books.