The Function Of A Great Library Is

History Isn't A Seesaw. If You Have A Really Bad Regime On One Side, The Actions On The Other Side Don't Automatically Become Good. It Doesn't Work That Way.

Sometimes, Despite The Fact That You're Reading Through Masses Of Material, You Just Can't Not Think About A Certain Event, For It Seems To Capture The Reality Of The Entire Situation So Much Better Than Any Set Of Statistics.

I'm Suspicious Of Full-replacement Programs - That Is, Pronouncements That One Way Of Doing Something Will Entirely Supplant Another, And That In Fact We Have To Hurry The Replacement Along.

There's A Time And Place For The Kindle, And I Own One Now And Have Books On It That I Don't Otherwise Have. But I Don't Find That My Hand Reaches Out For It The Way It Does For A Trade Paperback, Or (in The Middle Of The Night) For The Ipod Touch.

Footnotes Are The Finer-suckered Surfaces That Allow Testicular Paragraphs To Hold Fast To The Wider Reality Of The Library.