Darkness promotes speech.

Every reader exists to ensure for a certain book a modest immortality. Reading is, in this sense, a ritual of rebirth.

The love of libraries, like most loves, must be learned.

If justice takes place, there may be hope, even in the face of a seemingly capricious divinity.

One book calls to another unexpectedly, creating alliances across different cultures and centuries.

Deserted libraries hold the shades of writers who worked within, and are haunted by their absence.

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.

I like to imagine that, on the day after my last, my library and I will crumble together, so that even when I am no more I'll still be with my books.

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

Unpacking books is a revelatory activity.

If every library is in some sense a reflection of its readers, it is also an image of that which we are not, and cannot be.

Fear tries to get us to give up but faith takes us all the way through to victory

alone doesn't mean lonely. It just means alone. It just means that for now, you're on your own, and that's not a terrible thing.

. . . [The Judicial Branch] may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.

The difference between machines and human beings is that human beings can be reproduced by unskilled labour.

It is not enough to get things done; they must be done right.

I'd like to do a film which is funny.

Don't wait for mentors to seek you out. Don't ever wait for your phone calls to be returned, your letters to be answered, your faxes to be responded to. Keep going out and asking question.

Flattery is like chewing gum. Enjoy it but don't swallow it.

Beat me, hate me, you can never break me.

I am often tired of myself, and I have a notion that by travel I can add to my personality, and so change myself a little. I do not bring back from a journey quite the same self that I took.