“If there were libraries for musical instruments and for furniture, that would be great. Just to have something for a while, and then be able to let it go again.”

Will Oldham

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“There are 15 floors of stacks with 64 rows of books per floor, running about 25 feet each; 6 or 7 shelves in each row. Can you actually browse there, find books on your own, faced with the dark phalanxes? You can, once you get subject areas in your head. Having made enough spot searches, you grasp the logic of each floor. There are no signs to help you, only diagrams with codes and numbers. You can also create luck in any given spot: You turn your head to the opposing row of books. A different subject area can arise, perhaps only partly to do with your areas of interest. This is non-link-based browsing. You can discover, instead of being endlessly sought.”

Ben Ratliff

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“The library was quiet. It was busy but it was quiet and I thought it must be like this in a monastery where you had company and sympathy but your thoughts were your own. I looked up at the enormous stained-glass window and the beautiful oak staircase. I loved that building.”

Jeanette Winterson

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“A good librarian is not so different from a prospector, her whole brain a divining rod. She walks to books and stands and wonders: here? Is the answer here? The same blind faith in finding, even when hopeless. If someone caught me when I was in the throes of tracking something elusive, I would have told them: but it’s out there. I can feel it.”

Elizabeth McCracken

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“…e-books don’t wear out. Programming them to self-destruct after 26 checkouts is tantamount to asking librarians to embrace entropy. Anyone who thinks that this is going to happen has never spent any time with a librarian.”

Cory Doctorow

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“If the library disappears, then we’re really in trouble. A library is much more than a collection of books; it is a sanctuary, a symbol and both a model for community and its encouragement. Even those who make their living by nonverbal means know, as Keith Richards once declared, that ‘when you are growing up, there are two institutional places that affect you most powerfully: the church, which belongs to God, and the public library, which belongs to you. The public library is the great equalizer.’ The Rolling Stones guitarist, not surprisingly, made the only public American appearance in support of his recent autobiography at the New York Public Library.”

Pico Iyer

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“What happened was pure magic. People from within the demonstrations broke out of the demonstrations and simply linked hands, and they said, ‘This is our library. Don’t touch it.'”

Ismail Serageldin

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