Librarian Discworld Quotes

The three rules of the Librarians of Time and Space are: 1) Silence; 2) Books must be returned no later than the last date shown; and 3) Do not interfere with the nature of causality.

People flock in, nevertheless, in search of answers to those questions only librarians are considered to be able to answer, such as "Is this the laundry?" "How do you spell surreptitious?" and, on a regular basis, "Do you have a book I remember reading once? It had a red cover and it turned out they were twins.

The librarians were mysterious. It was said they could tell what book you needed just by looking at you, and they could take your voice away with a word.

A book has been taken. A book has been taken? You summoned the Watch," Carrot drew himself up proudly, "because someone's taken a book? You think that's worse than murder?" The Librarian gave him the kind of look other people would reserve for people who said things like "What's so bad about genocide?

The commander went, as they say in Ankh-Morpork, totally Librarian on them.

The Librarian was not familiar with love, which had always struck him as a bit ethereal and soppy, but kindness, on the other hand, was practical. You knew where you were with kindness, especially if you were holding a pie it had just given you.

He helped the Librarian up. There was a red glow in the ape's eyes. It had tried to steal his books. This was probably the best proof any wizard could require that the trolleys were brainless.

I'm not bloody well going to have it, understand?" Vimes shouted, shaking the ape back and forth. "Oook," the Librarian pointed out, patiently. "What? Oh. Sorry." Vimes lowered the ape, who wisely didn't make an issue out of it because a man angry enough to lift 300 pounds of orangutan without noticing is a man with too much on his mind.

The Librarian considered matters for a while. So…a dwarf and a troll. He preferred both species to humans. For one thing, neither of them were great readers. The Librarian was, of course, very much in favor of reading in general, but readers in particular got on his nerves. There was something, well, sacrilegious about the way they kept taking books off the shelves and wearing out the words by reading them. He liked people who loved and respected books, and the best way to do that, in the Librarian’s opinion, was to leave them on the shelves where Nature intended them to be.

The Librarian shyly held out a small, battered green book. Vimes had been expecting something bigger, but he took it anyway. It paid to look at any book the orangutan gave you. He matched you up to books. Vimes supposed it was a knack, in the same way that an undertaker was very good at judging heights.

The human mind was a deep and abiding mystery and the Librarian was glad he didn't have one anymore.

The Librarian liked being best man. You were allowed to kiss bridesmaids, and they weren't allowed to run away.

Knowledge equals power... The string was important. After a while the Librarian stopped. He concentrated all his powers of librarianship. Power equals energy... People were stupid, sometimes. They thought the Library was a dangerous place because of all the magical books, which was true enough, but what made it really one of the most dangerous places there could ever be was the simple fact that it was a library. Energy equals matter... He swung into an avenue of shelving that was apparently a few feet long and walked along it briskly for half an hour. Matter equals mass. And mass distorts space. It distorts it into polyfractal L-space. So, while the Dewey system has its fine points, when you're setting out to look something up in the multidimensional folds of L-space what you really need is a ball of string.

All libraries, everywhere, are connected by the bookworm holes in space created by the strong space-time distortions found around any large collections of books. Only a very few librarians learn the secret, and there are inflexible rules about making use of the fact. Because it amounts to time travel, and time travel causes big problems.

Of course, like all the informal inhabitants of the University the roaches were a little unusual, but there was something particularly unpleasant about the sound of billions of very small feet hitting the stones in perfect time. Rincewind stepped gingerly over the marching column. The Librarian jumped it. The Luggage, of course, followed them with a noise like someone tapdancing over a bag of crisps.

Big fat hairy monkey, hands a couple of octaves wide?

Yes, sir, but the Librarian likes bananas, sir." "Very nourishin' fruit, Mr Stibbons." "Yes, sir. Although, funnily enough it's not actually a fruit, sir." "Really?" "Yes, sir. Botanically, it's a type of fish, sir. According to my theory it's cladistically associated with the Krullian pipefish, sir, which of course is also yellow and goes around in bunches or shoals." "And lives in trees?" "Well, not usually, sir. The banana is obviously exploiting a new niche." "Good heavens, really? It's a funny thing, but I've never much liked bananas and I've always been a bit suspicious of fish, too. That'd explain it.

Very senior librarians, however, once they have proved themselves worthy by performing some valiant act of librarianship, are accepted into a secret order and are taught the raw arts of survival beyond the Shelves

three rules of the Librarians of Time and Space are: 1) Silence; 2) Books must be returned no later than the last date shown; and 3) Do not interfere with the nature of causality.

One such accident had turned the librarian into an ape, since when he had resisted all attempts to turn him back, explaining in sign language that life as an orangutan was considerably better than life as a human being, because all the big philosophical questions resolved themselves into wondering where the next banana was coming from. Anyway, long arms and prehensile feet were ideal for dealing with high shelves.

The Librarian looked at his charges approvingly, made his last rounds of the slumbering shelves, and then dragged his blanket underneath his desk, ate a goodnight banana, and fell asleep.

People flock in, nevertheless, in search of answers to those questions only librarians are considered to be able to answer, such as “Is this the laundry?” “How do you spell surreptitious?” and, on a regular basis, “Do you have a book I remember reading once? It had a red cover and it turned out they were twins.

The Librarian swung on. It was slow progress, because there were things he wasn't keen on meeting. Creatures evolved to fill every niche in the environment, and some of those in the dusty immensity of L-space were best avoided. They were much more unusual than ordinary unusual creatures. Usually he could forewarn himself by keeping a careful eye on the kickstool crabs that grazed harmlessly on the dust. When they were spooked, it was time to hide. Several times he had to flatten himself against the shelves as a thesaurus thundered by. He waited patiently as a herd of Critters crawled past, grazing on the contents of the choicer books and leaving behind them piles of small literary criticism. And there were other things, things which he hurried away from and tried not to look hard at... And you had to avoid cliches at all costs.

The Librarian was not very familiar with love, which had always struck him as a bit ethereal and soppy, but kindness, on the other hand, was practical. You knew where you were with kindness, especially if you were holding a pie it had just given you.

Nutt was technically an expert on love poetry throughout the ages and had discussed it at length with Miss Healstether, the castle librarian. He had also tried to discuss it with Ladyship, but she had laughed and said it was frivolity, although quite helpful as a tutorial on the use of vocabulary, scansion, rhythm and affect as a means to an end, to wit getting a young lady to take all her clothes off. At that particular point, Nutt had not really understood what she meant. It sounded like some sort of conjuring trick.

Still bemused, Marjorie said, ‘Yes, Jimmy Choos – not exactly librarian footwear, but it scares the daylights out of the city councillors when it comes to the budget.’ Glenda

Darwin’s theory of evolution explains how lower lifeforms can evolve into higher ones, which in turn makes it entirely reasonable that a human should evolve into an orangutan (while remaining a librarian, since there is no higher life form than a librarian).

It seemed quite logical to the Librarian that, since there were aisles where the shelves were on the outside then there should be other aisles in the space between the books themselves, created out of quantum ripples by the sheer weight of words. There were certainly some odd sounds coming from the other side of some shelving, and the Librarian knew that if he gently pulled out a book or two he would be peeking into different libraries under different skies. Books bend space and time. One reason the owners of those aforesaid little rambling, poky secondhand bookshops always seem slightly unearthly is that many of them really are, having strayed into this world after taking a wrong turning in their own bookshops in worlds where it is considered commendable business practice to wear carpet slippers all the time and open your shop only when you feel like it. You stray into L-space at your peril. Very senior librarians, however, once they have proved themselves worthy by performing some valiant act of librarianship, are accepted into a secret order and are taught the raw arts of survival beyond the Shelves We Know. The Librarian was highly skilled in all of them, but what he was attempting now wouldn’t just get him thrown out of the Order but probably out of life itself. All libraries everywhere are connected in L-space. All libraries. Everywhere. And the Librarian, navigating by booksign carved on shelves by past explorers, navigating by smell, navigating even by the siren whisperings of nostalgia, was heading purposely for one very special one. There was one consolation. If he got it wrong, he’d never know it.

The air became very still, so still that you could almost hear the slow fall of dust. The Librarian swung on his knuckles between the endless bookshelves. The dome of the Library was still overhead but then, it always was. It seemed quite logical to the Librarian that, since there were aisles where the shelves were on the outside then there should be other aisles in the space between the books themselves, created out of quantum ripples by the sheer weight of words. There were certainly some odd sounds coming from the other side of some shelving, and the Librarian knew that if he gently pulled out a book or two he would be peeking into different libraries under different skies. Books bend space and time. One reason the owners of those aforesaid little rambling, poky second-hand bookshops always seem slightly unearthly is that many of them really are, having strayed into this world after taking a wrong turning in their own bookshops in worlds where it is considered commendable business practice to wear carpet slippers all the time and open your shop only when you feel like it. You stray into L-space at your peril. Very senior librarians, however, once they have proved themselves worthy by performing some valiant act of librarianship, are accepted into a secret order and are taught the raw arts of survival beyond the Shelves We Know. The Librarian was highly skilled in all of them, but what he was attempting now wouldn't just get him thrown out of the Order but probably out of life itself. All libraries everywhere are connected in L-space. All libraries. Everywhere. And the Librarian, navigating by booksign carved on shelves by past explorers, navigating by smell, navigating even by the siren whisperings of nostalgia, was heading purposely for one very special one. There was one consolation. If he got it wrong, he'd never know it.

The Librarian was not very familiar with love, which had always struck him as a bit ethereal and soppy, but kindness, on the other hand, was practical.

He had been just another servant in the maze of the university, but now he was a friend of Nutt, and Nutt was important. He was also wrong. He had no place in the world, but he was in it, and the world was becoming aware of him soon enough. The Librarian knew all about this sort of thing. There had been no space in the fabric of reality marked ‘simian librarian’ until he’d been dropped into one, and the ripples had made his life a very strange one.

he was down in the main levels of the University library. It was an awe-inspiring place. Many of the books were magical, and the important thing to remember about grimoires is that they are deadly in the hands of any librarian who cares about order, because he’s bound to stick them all on the same shelf. This is not a good idea with books that tend to leak magic, because more than one or two of them together form a critical Black Mass.

Şey tırmanırken Dibblerlar ağızları açık, izliyorlardı. Çok hızlı hareket etmiyordu, zaman zaman tutunacağı bir sonraki yeri aramak için gevezelenen Kütüphaneci'yi yakındaki bir desteğe bırakması gerekiyordu, ama yukarıya ilerliyordu. "Ah, evet. Evet. Evet," diye nefes verdi Soll. "Ne resim ama! Saf sinema!" "Çığlıklar atan bir maymunu yüksek bir binanın tepesine taşıyan dev bir kadın," diye içini çekti Dibbler. "Ve ücret ödememiz bile gerekmiyor!" "Yaa," dedi Soll. "Ya..." dedi Dibbler. Sesinde minik bir kararsızlık tınısı vardı. Soll özlem dolu görünüyordu. "Yaa," diye tekrarladı. "Ee." "Ne demek istediğini anlıyorum," dedi Dibbler yavaşça. "Bu... Yani, gerçekten harika, ama... şey, elimde değil..." "Evet, yanlış bir şey var," dedi Dibbler ifadesiz bir sesle. "Yanlış değil," dedi Soll ümitsizce. "Tam olarak yanlış değil. Öyle yanlış değil. Yalnızca eksik..." Söyleyecek söz bulamayarak sustu. İçini çekti. Sonra Dibble içini çekti. Tepede, gök gürültüsü patladı. Ve gökyüzünden, üzerinde çığlık atan iki sihirbaz taşıyan bir süpürge çıktı.

They felt, in fact, tremendously bucked-up, which was how Lady Ramkin would almost certainly have put it and which was definitely several letters of the alphabet away from how they normally felt. Even the Librarian felt favored, and for once had let the phrase “my man” pass without comment.

Saw a funny thing this mornin’,” he said. “Saw a monkey in the quad. Bold as brass.” “Oh, yes,” said the Bursar, cheerfully. “That would be the Librarian.” “Got a pet, has he?” “No, you misunderstand me, Archchancellor,” said the Bursar cheerfully. “That was the Librarian.

Rincewind had been his assistant and his friend, and was a good man when it came to peeling a banana. He had also been uniquely good at running away from things. He was not, the Librarian considered, the type to be easily caught. There

The Librarian was doing his best, however, standing in a sort of respectful heap at the end of the line and maintaining the kind of complex salute you can only achieve with a four-foot arm. "E's plain clothes, ma'am,' said Nobby smartly. 'Special Ape Services

One such accident had turned the librarian into an ape, since when he had resisted all attempts to turn him back, explaining in sign language that life as an orangutan was considerably better than life as a human being, because all the big philosophical questions resolved themselves into wondering where the next banana was coming from.

The Librarian was, of course, very much in favor of reading in general, but readers in particular got on his nerves. There was something, well, sacrilegious about the way they kept taking books off the shelves and wearing out the words by reading them. He liked people who loved and respected books, and the best way to do that, in the Librarian’s opinion, was to leave them on the shelves where Nature intended them to be.

And some people didn’t like anyone who knew more than they did, so these days the wandering teachers and the traveling librarians steered clear of the place.

There was always this trouble with the Librarian. Everyone had got so accustomed to him it was hard to remember a time when the Library was not run by a yellow-fanged ape with the strength of three men. If the abnormal goes on long enough it becomes the normal. It was just that, when you came to explain it to a third party, it sounded odd. He coughed nervously. “He says ‘oook,’ Archchancellor,” he said. “And what’s that mean?” “Means ‘no,’ Archchancellor.” “And how does he say ‘yes,’ then?” The Bursar had been dreading this. “‘Oook,’ Archchancellor,” he said. “That was the same oook as the other oook!” “Oh, no. No. I assure you. There’s a different inflection . . .I mean, when you get used to . . .,” the Bursar shrugged. “I suppose we’ve just got into the way of understanding him, Archchancellor.

Running into the Librarian’s arm was like hitting a hairy iron bar.

People flock in, nevertheless, in search of answers to those questions only librarians are considered to be able to answer, such as ‘Is this the laundry?’ ‘How do you spell surreptitious?’ and, on a regular basis: ‘Do you have a book I remember reading once? It had a red cover and it turned out they were twins.

We made a big fuss over the possibility of microbes on Mars. If orangutans were Martians we’d cherish them, we’d be so amazed at how they’re like us but not like us, they’d be invited to tea and cigars at the White House. But they’re apes, sad in zoos, funny in movies, useful in advertisements and in fantasy books, I’m almost ashamed to say, but at least the Discworld’s Librarian has done his bit for the species and caused more than a few bob to flow their way.