At Night, Here In The Library, The

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.

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.

If The Library Of Alexandria Was The Emblem Of Our Ambition Of Omniscience, The Web Is The Emblem Of Our Ambition Of Omnipresence; The Library That Contained Everything Has Become The Library That Contains Anything.

The American Psychologist Julian Jaynes, In A Controversial Study On The Origin Of Consciousness, Argued That The Bicameral Mind - In Which One Of The Hemispheres Becomes Specialized In Silent Reading - Is A Late Development In Humankind's Evolution, And That The Process By Which This Function Develops Is Still Changing.

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.