Readers, Censors Know, Are Defined By The

Libraries, Whether My Own Or Shared With A Greater Reading Public, Have Always Seemed To Me Pleasantly Mad Places, And For As Long As I Can Remember I've Been Seduced By Their Labyrinthine Logic, Which Suggests That Reason (if Not Art) Rules Over A Cacophonous Arrangement Of Books.

Without Leskov There Would Be No Bulgakov, No Chekhov, But Also No Garca Mrquez And Julio Cortzar. . . . Leskov Is The Essential Storyteller: He Does Not Portray Life, He Creates It In All Its Wonder And Terror And Magic.

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.

Each Book Was A World Unto Itself, And In It I Took Refuge.

I Know That Something Dies When I Give Up My Books, And That My Memory Keeps Going Back To Them With Mournful Nostalgia.