Alberto Manguel Night Quotations

I remember, as a child, the confusion of not knowing what this place was where I was supposed to spend the night: it's a disquieting experience for a child. And what I would do was quickly unpack my books and go back to a book I knew well and make sure the same text and the same illustrations were there.

At night, here in the library, the ghosts have voices.

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

In the light, we read the inventions of others; in the darkness we invent our own stories.

If the library in the morning suggests an echo of the severe and reasonable wishful order of the world, the library at night seems to rejoice in the world's essential, joyful muddle.