The Telling Of Stories Creates The Real

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.

It Hardly Matters Why A Library Is Destroyed: Every Banning, Curtailment, Shredding, Plunder Or Loot Gives Rise (at Least As A Ghostly Presence) To A Louder, Clearer, More Durable Library Of The Banned, Looted, Plundered, Shredded Or Curtailed.

Books Read In A Public Library Never Have The Same Flavour As Books Read In The Attic Or The Kitchen.

We Can Imagine The Books We'd Like To Read, Even If They Have Not Yet Been Written, And We Can Imagine Libraries Full Of Books We Would Like To Possess, Even If They Are Well Beyond Our Reacher, Because We Enjoy Dreaming Up A Library That Reflects Every One Of Our Interests And Every One Of Our Foibles--a Library That, In Its Variety And Complexity, Fully Reflects The Reader We Are.

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