Quotes by Alberto Manguel

Alberto Manguel

A book brings its own history to the reader.

Book

Reader

A society can exist – many do exist – without writing, but no society can exist without reading.

Reading

Writing

And sometimes, when the stars are kind, we read with an intake of breath, with a shudder, as if someone or something had ‘walked over our grave,’ as if a memory had suddenly been rescued from a place deep within us – the recognition of something we never knew was there, or of something we vaguely felt as a flicker or a shadow, whose ghostly form rises and passes back into us before we can see what it is, leaving us older and wiser.

Leaving

Memories

Stars

As readers, we have gone from learning a precious craft whose secret was held by a jealous few, to taking for granted a skin that has become subordinate to principles of mindless financial profit or mechanical efficiency, a skill for which governments care almost nothing.

Government

Jealous

Skills

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.

Book

Fashion

Judging

But at night, when the library lamps are lit, the outside world disappears and nothing but the space of books remains in existence.

Book

Night

Space

Deadlines comes as a surprise….superb: a new genre, in fact, combining the pleasures of list-making with that of last-minute eaves-dropping.

Facts

Lasts

Lists

Every library is a library of preferences, and every chosen category implies an exclusion.

Exclusion

Library

Preference

Every reader exists to ensure for a certain book a modest immortality. Reading is, in this sense, a ritual of rebirth.

Book

Reading

Rebirth

Every reader has found charms by which to secure possession of a page that, by magic, becomes as if never read before, fresh and immaculate.

Charm

Magic

Pages

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Activity

Ambition

Art

Association

Attachment

Authority

Beautiful

Book

Breathing

Charm

Children

Crafts

Creating

Darkness

Development

Different

Discovery

Doe

Dragons

Dream

Engineering

Erotic

Essentials

Evil

Exclusion

Fables

Facts

Fashion

Feelings

Fire

Firsts

Funny

Games

Giving

Giving Up

Government

Hands

Humor

Humorous

Ideas

Imagination

Innocence

Ivory Tower

Jealous

Joyful

Judging

Justified

Knows

Lasts

Law

The Future Blueprint

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The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

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The Autobiography

Tool

The Behaviour Diary

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The Dating Diary

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The Relationship Therapist

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Quotes by Alberto Manguel

Alberto Manguel

A book brings its own history to the reader.

A society can exist – many do exist – without writing, but no society can exist without reading.

As readers, we have gone from learning a precious craft whose secret was held by a jealous few, to taking for granted a skin that has become subordinate to principles of mindless financial profit or mechanical efficiency, a skill for which governments care almost nothing.

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.

But at night, when the library lamps are lit, the outside world disappears and nothing but the space of books remains in existence.

Deadlines comes as a surprise….superb: a new genre, in fact, combining the pleasures of list-making with that of last-minute eaves-dropping.

Every library is a library of preferences, and every chosen category implies an exclusion.

Every reader exists to ensure for a certain book a modest immortality. Reading is, in this sense, a ritual of rebirth.

Every reader has found charms by which to secure possession of a page that, by magic, becomes as if never read before, fresh and immaculate.

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The Future Blueprint

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

The Autobiography

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The Dating Diary

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