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An obsession is a pleasure that has attained the status of an idea.”
I believe that to lend a book is an incitement to theft.
Superstition and the art of libraries are tightly entwined.
The search for others—to text, to email, to Skype, or to play with—establishes our own identities. We are, or we become, because someone acknowledges our presence.
Perhaps all intercourse—with pictures, with books, with people, with the virtual inhabitants of cyberspace—breeds sadness because it reminds us that, in the end, we are alone.
Because my childhood was largely nomadic, I liked to read about settled lives running their ordinary course. And yet, I was aware that without disruption there would be no adventure.
“The gods weave misfortunes for men,” King Alcinous says in the Odyssey, “so that the generations to come will have something to sing about.”
Don Quixote has attained the state of perfect readership, knowing his books by heart in the strictest sense of the word.
Loss helps you remember, and loss of a library helps you remember who you truly are.
“We must be grateful that we don’t know what the great books were that perished in Alexandria, because if we knew what they were, we’d be inconsolable.”
Losing things is not so bad because you learn to enjoy not what you have but what you remember. You should grow accustomed to loss.
Buenos Aires has always been a city of books, ever since its foundation. I remember the curious pride I felt when our history teacher told us that Buenos Aires had been founded with a library.
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