Reading Is At The Beginning Of The

At One Magical Instant In Your Early Childhood, The Page Of A Book—that String Of Confused, Alien Ciphers—shivered Into Meaning. Words Spoke To You, Gave Up Their Secrets; At That Moment, Whole Universes Opened. You Became, Irrevocably, A Reader.

Books May Not Change Our Suffering, Books May Not Protect Us From Evil, Books May Not Tell Us What Is Good Or What Is Beautiful, And They Will Certainly Not Shield Us From The Common Fate Of The Grave. But Books Grant Us Myriad Possibilities: The Possibility Of Change, The Possibility Of Illumination.

Through Ignorance, Through Faith, Through Intelligence, Through Trickery And Cunning, Through Illumination, The Reader Rewrites The Text With The Same Words Of The Original But Under Another Heading, Re-creating It, As It Were, In The Very Act Of Bringing It Into Being.

When Literature Is Discovered, A Revelation Occurs: The Joyful, Exultant Knowledge That Anything Can Happen.

During The Day, The Library Is A Realm Of Order.