Libraries Garden Quotes

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

A library of books is the fairest garden in the world, and to walk there is an ecstasy.

Our homes do not have to offer us permanent occupancy or store our clothes to merit the name. To speak of home in relation to a building is simply to recognise its harmony with our own prized internal song. Home can be an airport or a library, a garden or a motorway diner.

When I got to the library I came to a standstill, - ah, the dear room, what happy times I have spent in it rummaging amongst the books, making plans for my garden, building castles in the air, writing, dreaming, doing nothing.

If you spend your time chasing butterflies, they'll fly away. But if you spend time making a beautiful garden, the butterflies will come. Don't chase, attract.

September 15th. - This is the month of quiet days, crimson creepers, and blackberries; of mellow afternoons in the ripening garden; of tea under acacias instead of too shady beeches; of wood fires in the library in chilly evenings.

He looks at me, and I don't know what he sees. I used to think it was Rose. But she's not here with us now, in this room. It's just him and me, and the books. I feel like our lives are in those books. I feel like all the words on the pages are for us.

Alma came to consider her library work as a kind of indoor gardening,

He is writing a book," said the King, following them out into the sunny, crisp gardens. "About the gardens here. We have two of his books already. Library, north side, O. What say you, Miss Azalea? Does he pass that list of your sisters'?" Azalea cocked her head. Was the king actually teasing her? "He'll have to shave," she said, deciding to take his lead. "And what," said the King, stroking his own close-trimmed beard, "is wrong with whiskers?" Azalea laughed, surprised at the King's uncharacteristic funning.

Libraries Are Neccessary Gardens, Unsurpassed At Growing Excitement

Chiltington was a snake. Worse. A garden slug. Maybe a leech. Something oily and slimy that left a greasy trail and liked to mooch off other people’s ideas.

Si hortum in bibliotheca habes, nihil deerit. (If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.)

Thus I hope to have kept the sound of the sea and the birds, dawn and garden subconsciously present, doing their work under ground.

In my garden I spend my days, in my library I spend my nights. My interests are divided between my geraniums and my books. With the flower I am in the present; with the book I am in the past.

Planting a flower's like opening a book, because either way you're starting something. And your garden's your library.

A modest garden contains, for those who know how to look and to wait, more instruction than a library.

People walk the paths of the gardens below, and the wind sings anthems in the hedges, and the big old cedars at the entrance to the maze creak. Marie-Laure imagines the electromagnetic waves traveling into and out of Michel’s machine, bending around them, just as Etienne used to describe, except now a thousand times more crisscross the air than when he lived - maybe a million times more. Torrents of text conversations, tides of cell conversations, of televisions programs, of e-mails, vast networks of fiber and wire interlaced above and beneath the city, passing through buildings, arcing between transmitters in Metro tunnels, between antennas atop buildings, from lampposts with cellular transmitters in them, commercials for Carrefour and Evian and prebaked toaster pastries flashing into space and back to earth again, I am going to be late and Maybe we should get reservations? and Pick up avocados and What did he say? and ten thousand I miss yous, fifty thousand I love yous, hate mail and appointment reminders and market updates, jewelry ads, coffee ads, furniture ads flying invisibly over the warrens of Paris, over the battlefields and tombs, over the Ardennes, over the Rhine, over Belgium and Denmark, over the scarred and ever-shifting landscape we call nations. And is it so hard to believe that souls might also travel those paths? That her father and Etienne and Madame Manec and the German boy named Werner Pfennig might harry the sky in flocks, like egrets, like terns, like starlings? That great shuttles of souls might fly about, faded but audible if you listen closely enough? They flow above the chimneys, ride the sidewalks, slip through your jacket and shirt and breastbone and lungs, and pass out through the other side, the air a library and the record of every life lived, every sentence spoken, every word transmitted still reverberating within it. Every hour, she thinks, someone for whom the war was memory falls out of the world. We rise again in the grass. In the flowers. In songs.

Winter is when I reorganise my bookshelves and read all the books I acquired in the previous year and failed to actually read. It is also the time when I reread beloved novels, for the pleasure of reacquainting myself with old friends. In summer, I want big, splashy ideas and trashy page-turners, devoured while lounging in a garden chair or perching on one of the breakwaters on the beach. In winter, I want concepts to chew over in a pool of lamplight—slow, spiritual reading, a reinforcement of the soul. Winter is a time for libraries, the muffled quiet of bookstacks and the scent of old pages and dust. In winter, I can spend hours in silent pursuit of a half-understood concept or a detail of history. There is nowhere else to be, after all.

If you have a library in your garden, everything will be complete.

Let no one reduce to tears or reproach This statement of the mastery of God, Who, with magnificent irony, gave Me at once both books and night Of this city of books He pronounced rulers These lightless eyes, who can only Peruse in libraries of dreams The insensible paragraphs that yield With every new dawn. Vainly does the day Lavish on them its infinite books, Arduous as the arduous manuscripts Which at Alexandria did perish. Of hunger and thirst (a Greek story tells us) Dies a king amidst fountains and gardens; I aimlessly weary at the confines Of this tall and deep blind library. Encyclopedias, atlases, the East And the West, centuries, dynasties Symbols, cosmos and cosmogonies Do walls proffer, but pointlessly. Slow in my shadow, I the hollow shade Explore with my indecisive cane; To think I had imagined Paradise In the form of such a library. Something, certainly not termed Fate, rules on such things; Another had received in blurry Afternoons both books and shadow. Wandering through these slow corridors I often feel with a vague and sacred dread That I am another, the dead one, who must Have trodden the same steps at the same time. Which of the two is now writing this poem Of a plural I and of a single shadow? How important is the word that names me If the anathema is one and indivisible? Groussac or Borges, I see this darling World deform and extinguish To a pale, uncertain ash Resembling sleep and oblivion

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

It is their nature, beautiful and simple. That you would destroy such beings, Mr. Lincoln, such superior creatures, seems madness to me.” “That you speak of them with such reverence, Mr. Poe, seems madness to me.” "Can you imagine it? Can you imagine seeing the universe through such eyes? Laughing in the face of time and death—the world your Garden of Eden? Your library? Your harem?

I like to live spaciously, but rather plainly, in large halls with great spaces and quiet libraries. I like to wake in the morning with the sense of a great, silent garden round me.

Sentinels are sort of like Mary, aren’t we?” His voice was quiet. “We’re alone in the world, taken from our true parents. I like to think of the libraries as our secret garden. Our escape.

Lyra at eighteen sitting intent and absorbed in Duke Humfrey’s Library with the alethiometer and a pile of leather-bound books. Tucking the hair back behind her ears, pencil in mouth, finger moving down a list of symbols, Pantalaimon holding the stiff old pages open for her … “Look, Pan, there’s a pattern there—see? That’s why they’re in that sequence!” And it felt as if the sun had come out. It was the second thing she said to Will next day in the Botanic Garden.

Mornings, out in the garden, she would, at times, read aloud from one of her many overdue library books. Dew as radiant as angel spit glittered on the petals of Jack's roses. Jack was quite the gardener. Miriam thought she knew why her particularly favored roses. The inside of a rose does not at all correspond with its exterior beauty. If one tears off all the petals of the corolla, all that remains is a sordid-looking tuft. Roses would be right up Jack's alley, all right. "Here's something for you, Jack," Miriam said. You'll appreciate this. Beckett describes tears as 'liquified brain.' "God, Miriam," Jack said. "Why are you sharing that with me? Look at this day, it's a beautiful day! Stop pumping out the cesspit! Leave the cesspit alone!

Lying there, I thought of my own culture, of the assembly of books in the library at Alexandria; of the deliberations of Darwin and Mendel in their respective gardens; of the architectural conception of the cathedral at Chartres; of Bach's cello suites, the philosophy of Schweitzer, the insights of Planck and Dirac. Have we come all this way, I wondered, only to be dismantled by our own technologies, to be betrayed by political connivance or the impersonal avarice of a corporation?

Alice imagined a library must be a quiet garden of books, where stories grew like flowers.

If you have a garden in your library, nothing will fail

A library of books is the fairest garden in the world, and to walk there is an ecstasy. —The Arabian Nights

What counts as social infrastructure? I define it capaciously. Public institutions such as libraries, schools, playgrounds, parks, athletic fields, and swimming pools are vital parts of the social infrastructure. So too are sidewalks, courtyards, community gardens, and other green spaces that invite people into the public realm. Community organizations, including churches and civic associations, act as social infrastructures when they have an established physical space where people can assemble, as do regularly scheduled markets for food, furniture, clothing, art, and other consumer goods. Commercial establishments can also be important parts of the social infrastructure, particularly when they operate as what the sociologist Ray Oldenburg called "third spaces," places (like cafes, diners, barbershops, and bookstores) where people are welcome to congregate and linger regardless of what they've purchased.

I laughed on the way home, and I laughed again for sheer satisfaction when we reached the garden and drove between the quiet trees to the pretty old house; for when I went into the library, with its four windows open to the moonlight and the scent, and looked round at the familiar bookshelves, and could hear no sounds but sounds of peace, and knew that here I might read or dream or idle exactly as I chose with never a creature to disturb me, how grateful I felt to the kindly Fate that has brought me here and given me a heart to understand my own blessedness, and rescued me from a life like that I had just seen -- a life spent with the odours of other people's dinners in one's nostrils, and the noise of their wrangling servants in one's years, and parties and tattle for all amusement.

she just went to the library to read, to escape into other people's imaginations. Often, she reread books she'd loved as a child, their familiarity a balm--- Grimms' Fairy Tales, The Chronicles of Narnia, and her favorite, The Secret Garden. Sometimes, she would close her eyes and find herself not in bed with Simon, but amongst the tangled plants at Misselthwaite Manor, watching roses nod in the breeze.

When she had arranged her household affairs, she came to the library and bade me follow her. Then, with the mirror still swinging against her knees, she led me through the garden and the wilderness down to a misty wood. It being autumn, the trees were tinted gloriously in dusky bars of colouring. The rowan, with his amber leaves and scarlet berries, stood before the brown black-spotted sycamore; the silver beech flaunted his golden coins against my poverty; firs, green and fawn-hued, slumbered in hazy gossamer. No bird carolled, although the sun was hot. Marina noted the absence of sound, and without prelude of any kind began to sing from the ballad of the Witch Mother: about the nine enchanted knots, and the trouble-comb in the lady's knotted hair, and the master-kid that ran beneath her couch. Every drop of my blood froze in dread, for whilst she sang her face took on the majesty of one who traffics with infernal powers. As the shade of the trees fell over her, and we passed intermittently out of the light, I saw that her eyes glittered like rings of sapphires. ("The Basilisk")

Moreover, in a hundred years, I thought, reaching my own doorstep, women will have ceased to be the protected sex. Logically they will take part in all the activities and exertions that were once denied them. The nursemaid will heave coal. The shop-woman will drive an engine. All assumptions founded on the facts observed when women were the protected sex will have disappeared—as, for example (here a squad of soldiers marched down the street), that women and clergymen and gardeners live longer than other people. Remove that protection, expose them to the same exertions and activities, make them soldiers and sailors and engine-drivers and dock labourers, and will not women die off so much younger, so much quicker, than men that one will say, “I saw a woman today,” as one used to say, “I saw an aeroplane.” Anything may happen when womanhood has ceased to be a protected occupation,

It was the time between the lights when colours undergo their intensification and purples and golds burn in window-panes like the beat of an excitable heart; when for some reason the beauty of the world revealed and yet soon to perish (here I pushed into the garden, for, unwisely, the door was left open and no beadles seemed about), the beauty of the world which is so soon to perish, has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.

So she sticks close to her father, and whenever he gives gold to her sisters for new dresses and boots, he also slips her some, which Mei uses to buy new books, while the rest she buries under a floorboard so she can one day live free of men entirely in a house of her own with a library two stories high and a garden where she can read.

A well-stocked, well-staffed library is like a gardener who plants books, knowledge, and dreams and grows readers, learners, and do-ers.

There must be every kind of books in your library. The most beautiful gardens are those with many different flowers, with all kinds of herbs and weeds!

The man who has a garden and a library has everything.

Oliver, success is usually a feeling of mere relief, where failure is pain. Happiness, you see, lies in neither, but in sticking to a daily ritual and becoming absorbed in something useful. When the war is over, even the greatest warriors do not exult. They go back to their garden or kitchen or library -- or school -- and resume life. (as said by Mrs. Pearson)

The first, you’ll find by paying attention to these words from Cicero (though, I’ll admit, I’m partial to libraries): “If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

Pressed between their covers were words that planted seeds in the garden of Tama’s mind. How magical that—even in Minidoka—such a small little library could fit so much inside of its four walls!

People were beginning to compare her to poplar trees, early dawn, hyacinths, fawns, running water, and garden lilies, and it made her life a burden to her, for she so much preferred being left alone to do what she liked in the country, but they would compare her to lilies, and she had to go to parties, and London was so dreary compared with being alone in the country with her father and the dogs.

He would never love me because of Rebecca. She was in the house still, as Mrs Danvers had said; she was in that room in the west wing, she was in the library, in the morning-room, in the gallery above the hall. Even in the little flower-room, where her mackintosh still hung. And in the garden, and in the woods, and down in the stone cottage on the beach. Her footsteps sounded in the corridors, her scent lingered on the stairs. The servants obeyed her orders still, the food we ate was the food she liked. Her favourite flowers filled the rooms. Her clothes were in the wardrobes in her room, her

Miss Appleby, her library books, and her story-telling sessions were very popular with all the children in Heavenly Valley. To Nancy and Plum they were a magic carpet that whisked them out of the dreariness and drudgery of their lives at Mrs. Monday's and transported them to palaces in India, canals in Holland, pioneer stockades during the Indian wars, cattle ranches in the West, mountains in Switzerland, pagodas in China, igloos in Alaska, jungles in Africa, castles in England, slums in London, gardens in Japan, or most important of all, into happy homes where there were mothers and fathers and no Mrs. Mondays or Marybelles.

I CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT A LIBRARY, and I cannot live without a garden,” says Vik Muniz. “A garden is where we negotiate with nature—a place between the wild and the tame—and a library is where we confront everything.

Mort assisted Albert, or found jobs in the garden or stable, or browsed through Death’s extensive library, reading with the speed and omnivorousness common to those who discover the magic of the written word for the first time.

Sweet are the oases in Sahara; charming the isle-groves of August prairies; delectable pure faith amidst a thousand perfidies; but sweeter, still more charming, most delectable, the dreamy Paradise of Bachelors, found in the stony heart of stunning London. In mild meditation pace the cloisters; take your pleasure, sip your leisure, in the garden waterward; go linger in the ancient library; go worship in the scultured chapel; but little have you seen, just nothing do you know, not the sweet kernel have you tasted, till you dine among the banded Bachelors, and see their convivial eyes and glasses sparkle. Not dine in bustling commons, during term time, in the hall; but tranquilly, by private hint, at a private table; some fine Templar's hospitably invited guest.

During the school year, I practically lived in Dongguk’s modern, glass-walled library, with its stacks of tantalizing books and its high-speed Internet access. It became my playground, my dining room, and sometimes my bedroom. I liked the library best late at night, when there were fewer students around to distract me. When I needed a break, I took a walk out to a small garden that had a bench overlooking the city. I often bought a small coffee from a vending machine for a few cents and just sat there for a while, staring into the sea of lights that was metropolitan Seoul. Sometimes I wondered how there could be so many lights in this place when, just thirty-five miles north of here, a whole country was shrouded in darkness. Even in the small hours of the morning, the city was alive with flashing signs and blinking transmission towers and busy roadways with headlights traveling along like bright cells pumping through blood vessels. Everything was so connected, and yet so remote. I would wonder: Where is my place out there? Was I a North Korean or a South Korean? Was I neither?

It was four o'clock of a stickily wet Saturday. As long as it is anything from Monday to Friday the average library attendant goes around thanking her stars she isn't a school-teacher; but the last day of the week, when the rest of the world is having its relaxing Saturday off and coming to gloat over you as it acquires its Sunday-reading best seller, if you work in a library you begin just at noon to wish devoutly that you'd taken up scrubbing-by-the-day, or hack-driving, or porch-climbing or- anything on earth that gave you a weekly half-holiday!

Architect Robert Alexander, who was the business partner of celebrated California architect Richard Neutra, decided to protest the proposed destruction of the garden. He chained himself to a rock near the Well of the Scribes and said he would stay there until the paving plan was abandoned.

Oh, there IS one, of course, but you'll never know it." The assertion, laughingly flung out six months earlier in a bright June garden, came back to Mary Boyne with a sharp perception of its latent significance as she stood, in the December dusk, waiting for the lamps to be brought into the library.

You and your flowers," I mused. "Do you ever miss your garden?" "I've spent the last decade living half my life in Egypt," she said. "After so much desert, of course I miss the green. I miss a lot of things whenever I leave Argentina. Té de maté, empanadas. The way I could smell the ocean from the balcony of my bedroom.

I left the house at around midnight and crept up the driveway to the road. I wore canvas sneakers, athletic socks, safari shorts, a tee-shirt, and had the bright purple knapsack containing Jim's cold, hard foot, a garden trowel, a box of candles and matches to light them, a library copy of The Egyptian Book of the Dead, and some fig bars for a snack.

Every day that passed with my hands in a sink full of dirty dishes and my bank account in the red brought me one step closer to the inevitable. Growing old in a place like this, using my youthful disappointments as a reason to hide. Turning into a sour, miserable old woman whose only solace could be found between the pages of a book—or a garden like this one.

A library is a mausoleum: books of the dead. And so many. And so many secrets lost to him forever. Hadn't time for it all and if he couldn't do it all then there was no point in doing any of it. For such an effort would be like drawing a single breath in the knowledge that you would not draw another. You were fated to suffocate, to die. You were fated to become extinct.

How about you tell me which plants are which, and we'll... organize them. So that they all have the chance to thrive. We can designate areas for different kinds of plants and transplant the rest outside the fence. Like at the library." She walked toward the east side of the garden. "Here's the Nonfiction section. Vegetables only here." "New Studies and Treaties," Caz said, designating an area at the front of the Nonfiction section. "Your seeds can go here. And in the back, Histories--- that's the old growth." "In the front of the cottage, Fiction. That'll be all the flowers." "What about the berries?" "Journals of Scientific Papers," she decided, because of the way the brambles both supported and strangled one another. "Along the far fence.

People began to find out in the last century was that thoughts-just mere thoughts-are as powerful as electric batteries-as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got in you may never get over it as long as you live.

It's been over a year since they've visited their son's market. As they walk through the parking lot they take in a number of improvements. Brian admires the raised garden beds made of cedar planks that flank the sides of the lot. There are stalks of tomatoes, staked beans, baskets of green herbs- oregano, lavender, fragrant blades of lemongrass and pointed curry leaf. The planter of baby lettuces has a chalkboard hung from its side: "Just add fork." A wheelbarrow parked by the door is heaped with bright coronas of sunflowers, white daisies, jagged red ginger and birds-of-paradise. Avis feels a leap of pride as they enter the market: the floor of polished bamboo, the sky-blue ceiling, the wooden shelves- like bookshelves in a library. And the smells. Warm, round billows of baking bread, roasting garlic and onions and chicken.

 Life itself being worth less, all things with it, which minister to it, are worth less. Suppose you have a small library, with pictures to adorn the walls—a garden laid out around—and contemplate scientific and literary pursuits and discover all at once that your villa, with all its contents is located in hell, and that the justice of the peace has a cloven foot and a forked tail—do not these things suddenly lose their value in your eyes?

found the State Historical Society of Wisconsin to be a trove of relevant materials that conveyed a sense of the woof and weave of life in Hitler’s Berlin. There, in one locale, I found the papers of Sigrid Schultz, Hans V. Kaltenborn, and Louis Lochner. A short and lovely walk away, in the library of the University of Wisconsin, I found as well a supply of materials on the only UW alumna to be guillotined at Hitler’s command, Mildred Fish Harnack.

But before I go, I want to tell you a little story. “A certain shopkeeper sent his son to learn about the secret of happiness from the wisest man in the world. The lad wandered through the desert for forty days, and finally came upon a beautiful castle, high atop a mountain. It was there that the wise man lived. “Rather than finding a saintly man, though, our hero, on entering the main room of the castle, saw a hive of activity: tradesmen came and went, people were conversing in the corners, a small orchestra was playing soft music, and there was a table covered with platters of the most delicious food in that part of the world. The wise man conversed with everyone, and the boy had to wait for two hours before it was his turn to be given the man’s attention. “The wise man listened attentively to the boy’s explanation of why he had come, but told him that he didn’t have time just then to explain the secret of happiness. He suggested that the boy look around the palace and return in two hours. “‘Meanwhile, I want to ask you to do something,’ said the wise man, handing the boy a teaspoon that held two drops of oil. ‘As you wander around, carry this spoon with you without allowing the oil to spill.’ “The boy began climbing and descending the many stairways of the palace, keeping his eyes fixed on the spoon. After two hours, he returned to the room where the wise man was. “‘Well,’ asked the wise man, ‘did you see the Persian tapestries that are hanging in my dining hall? Did you see the garden that it took the master gardener ten years to create? Did you notice the beautiful parchments in my library?’ “The boy was embarrassed, and confessed that he had observed nothing. His only concern had been not to spill the oil that the wise man had entrusted to him. “‘Then go back and observe the marvels of my world,’ said the wise man. ‘You cannot trust a man if you don’t know his house.’ “Relieved, the boy picked up the spoon and returned to his exploration of the palace, this time observing all of the works of art on the ceilings and the walls. He saw the gardens, the mountains all around him, the beauty of the flowers, and the taste with which everything had been selected. Upon returning to the wise man, he related in detail everything he had seen. “‘But where are the drops of oil I entrusted to you?’ asked the wise man. “Looking down at the spoon he held, the boy saw that the oil was gone. “‘Well, there is only one piece of advice I can give you,’ said the wisest of wise men. ‘The secret of happiness is to see all the marvels of the world, and never to forget the drops of oil on the spoon.

Consider it a Solstice and birthday present in one.' He gestured to the house, the gardens, the grounds that flowed to the river's edge. With a perfect view of the Rainbow at night, thanks to the land's curve. 'It's yours. Ours. I purchased it on Solstice Eve. Workers are coming in two days to begin clearing the rubble and knock down the rest of the house.' I blinked again, long and slow. 'You bought me an estate?' 'Technically, it will be our estate, but the house is yours. Build it to your heart's content. Everything you want, everything you need- build it.' The cost alone, the sheer size of this gift had to astronomical. 'Rhys.' He paced a few steps, running his hands through his blue-black hair, his wings tucked in tight. 'We have no space at the town house. You and I can barely fit everything in the bedroom. And no one wants to be at the House of Wind.' He again gestured to the magnificent estate around us. 'So build a house for us, Feyre. Dream as wildly as you want. It's yours.' I didn't have words for it. What cascaded through me. 'It- the cost-' 'Don't worry about the cost.' 'But...' I gaped at the sleeping, tangled land, the ruined house. Pictured what I might want there. My knees wobbled. 'Rhys- it's too much.' His face became deadly serious. 'Not for you. Never for you.' He slid his arms around my waist, kissing my temple. 'Build a house with a painting studio.' He kissed my other temple. 'Build a house with an office for you, and one for me. Build a house with a bathtub big enough for two- and for wings.' Another kiss, this time to my cheek. 'Build a house with a garden for Elain, a training ring for the Illyrian babies, a library for Amren, and an enormous dressing room for Mor.' I choked on a laugh at that. But Rhys silenced it with a kiss to my mouth, lingering and sweet. 'Build a house with a nursery, Feyre.' My heart tightened to the point of pain, and I kissed him back. Kissed him again and again, the property wide and clear around us. 'I will,' I promised.

He finished his meeting a few minutes later and almost rudely ejected his business acquaintances from his library, then he went in search of Elizabeth. “She is out in the gardens, my lord,” his butler informed him. A short while later Ian strolled out the French doors and started down the balcony steps to join her. She was bending down and snapping a withered rosebud from its stem. “It only hurts for a moment,” she told the bush, “and it’s for your own good. You’ll see.” With an embarrassed little smile she looked up at him. “It’s a habit,” she explained. “It obviously works,” he said with a tender smile, looking at the way the flowers bloomed about her skirts. “How can you tell?” “Because,” he said quietly as she stood up, “until you walked into it, this was an ordinary garden.” Puzzled, Elizabeth tipped her head. “What is it now?” “Heaven.” Elizabeth’s breath caught in her chest at the husky timbre of his voice and the desire in his eyes. He held out his hand to her, and, without realizing what she was doing, she lifted her hand and gave it to him, then she walked straight into his arms. For one breathless moment his smoldering eyes studied her face feature by feature while the pressure of his arms slowly increased, and then he bent his head. His sensual mouth claimed hers in a kiss of violent tenderness and tormenting desire while his hands slid over the sides of her breasts, and Elizabeth felt all her resistance, all her will, begin to crumble and disintegrate, and she kissed him back with her whole heart.

Oh! what a superior man," said Candide below his breath. "What a great genius is this Pococurante! Nothing can please him." After their survey of the library they went down into the garden, where Candide praised its several beauties. "I know of nothing in so bad a taste," said the master. "All you see here is merely trifling. After to-morrow I will have it planted with a nobler design." Well," said Candide to Martin when they had taken their leave, "you will agree that this is the happiest of mortals, for he is above everything he possesses." "But do you not see," answered Martin, "that he is disgusted with all he possesses? Plato observed a long while ago that those stomachs are not the best that reject all sorts of food." "But is there not a pleasure," said Candide, "in criticising everything, in pointing out faults where others see nothing but beauties?

You could eat in the finest restaurants, you could partake in every sensual pleasure, you could sing on stage in São Paulo to twenty thousand people, you could soak up whole thunderstorms of applause, you could travel to the ends of the Earth, you could be followed by millions on the internet, you could win Olympic medals, but this was all meaningless without love. And when she thought of her root life, the fundamental problem with it, the thing that had left her vulnerable, really, was the absence of love. Even her brother hadn’t wanted her in that life. There had been no one, once Volts had died. She had loved no one, and no one had loved her back. She had been empty, her life had been empty, walking around, faking some kind of human normality like a sentient mannequin of despair. Just the bare bones of getting through. Yet there, right there in that garden in Cambridge, under that dull grey sky, she felt the power of it, the terrifying power of caring deeply and being cared for deeply. Okay, her parents were still dead in this life but here there was Molly, there was Ash, there was Joe. There was a net of love to break her fall.

I was brought up to a trade, you know,’ continued Anthony. ‘And you abandoned it?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Why?’ ‘A matter of principle.’ ‘Oh!’ ‘You’re a very unusual woman,’ said Anthony suddenly, turning and looking at her. ‘Why?’ ‘You can refrain from asking questions.’ ‘You mean that I haven’t asked you what your trade was?’ ‘Just that.’ Again they walked on in silence. They were nearing the house now, passing close by the scented sweetness of the rose garden. ‘You understand well enough, I dare say,’ said Anthony, breaking the silence. ‘You know when a man’s in love with you. I don’t suppose you care a hang for me—or for anyone else—but, by God, I’d like to make you care.’ ‘Do you think you could?’ asked Virginia, in a low voice. ‘Probably not, but I’d have a damned good try.’ ‘Are you sorry you ever met me?’ she said suddenly. ‘Lord no. It’s the red signal again. When I first saw you—that day in Pont Street, I knew I was up against something that was going to hurt like fun. Your face did that to me—just your face. There’s magic in you from head to foot—some women are like that, but I’ve never known a woman who had so much of it as you have. You’ll marry someone respectable and prosperous, I suppose, and I shall return to my disreputable life, but I’ll kiss you once before I go—I swear I will.’ ‘You can’t do it now,’ said Virginia softly. ‘Superintendent Battle is watching us out of the library window.

Kay suffered from a congenital lack of energy, and after taking books out of W.H. Smith's lending libraries in Swindon and Marlborough she would succumb to a mysterious, destructive lassitude which prevented her from returning them until long after the dates written on the little tickets dangling reproachfully from their spines. Conscious of having incurred a debt which mounted terrifyingly with every day that went by, and unable to compute with even approximate accuracy the sum of the fines to which she might eventually be liable, she would postpone their settlement yet further. When at last Kay feared that some river of no return had been fatally crossed, she judged it too much to much of a risk to be seen passing W.H. Smith's shop windows in either town, and to escape notice, recognition and exposure she would condemn herself to inconvenient detours, dodging down side alleys or hiding behind traffic in the main streets except on safe Sundays and early-closing afternoons. Most of the borrowed books did in the end find their way back to the libraries(sometimes conveyed there by me) but one of her favourites - Without My Cloak by Kate O'Brien - still remained in her possession. Kay's sense of guilt at having in effect stolen Without My Cloak had become so overwhelming that she now refused to visit Marlborough or Swindon at all unless she was covered up in some sort of wrap as a token disguise - in fact(I made myself laugh at the thought as I waited for the hours to pass in my lonely dark hilltop watch) in those places she was never without her cloak!

It was a gorgeous evening, with a breeze shimmering through the trees, people strolling hand in hand through the quaint streets and the plaza. The shops, bistros and restaurants were abuzz with patrons. She showed him where the farmer's market took place every Saturday, and pointed out her favorite spots- the town library, a tasting room co-op run by the area vintners, the Brew Ha-Ha and the Rose, a vintage community theater. On a night like this, she took a special pride in Archangel, with its cheerful spirit and colorful sights. She refused to let the Calvin sighting drag her down. He had ruined many things for her, but he was not going to ruin the way she felt about her hometown. After some deliberation, she chose Andaluz, her favorite spot for Spanish-style wines and tapas. The bar spilled out onto the sidewalk, brightened by twinkling lights strung under the big canvas umbrellas. The tables were small, encouraging quiet intimacy and insuring that their knees would bump as they scooted their chairs close. She ordered a carafe of local Mataro, a deep, strong red from some of the oldest vines in the county, and a plancha of tapas- deviled dates, warm, marinated olives, a spicy seared tuna with smoked paprika. Across the way in the plaza garden, the musician strummed a few chords on his guitar. The food was delicious, the wine even better, as elemental and earthy as the wild hills where the grapes grew. They finished with sips of chocolate-infused port and cinnamon churros. The guitar player was singing "The Keeper," his gentle voice seeming to float with the breeze.

Do you like to read?' Emerie's mouth curled upward. 'I live alone, up in the mountains. I have nothing to do with my spare time except work in my garden and read whatever books I order through the mail service. And in the winter, I don't even have the distraction of my gardening. So, yes, I like to read. I cannot survive without reading.' Nesta grunted her agreement. 'What manner of books?' Gwyn asked. 'Romantics,' Emerie said, adjusting her own hair, the thick black braid full of reds and browns in the sunlight. Nesta started. Emerie's eyes lit. 'You too? Which ones?' Nesta rattled off her top five, and Emerie grinned, so broadly it was like seeing another person. 'Have you read Sellyn Drake's novels?' Nesta shook her head. Emerie gasped, so dramatically that Cassian muttered something about sparing him from smut-obsessed females before heading further into the ring. 'You must read her books. You must. I'll bring the first one tomorrow. You'll stay up all night reading it, I swear.' 'Smut?' Gwyn asked, catching Cassian's muttered words. There was enough hesitation in her voice to make Nesta draw up straight. Nesta glanced at Emerie, realising the female didn't know about Gwyn- her history, or why the priestesses lived in the library. But Emerie asked. 'What do you read?' 'Adventure, sometimes mysteries. But mostly I read whatever Merrill, the priestess I work with, has written that day. Not as exciting as romance, not by a long shot. Emerie said casually. 'I can bring one of Drake's brooks for you, too- one of her milder ones. An introduction to the wonders of romance.' Emerie winked at Nesta. Nesta waited for Gwyn to refuse, but the priestess smiled. 'I'd like that.

Of course, he thought, if he ever thought about it at all, that he would be remembered for some of the many small works he wrote and published, mostly travel chronicles, though not necessarily travel chronicles in the modern sense, but little books that are still charming today and, how shall I say, highly perceptive, anyway as perceptive as they could be, little books that made it seem as if the ultimate purpose of each of his trips was to examine a particular garden, gardens sometimes forgotten, forsaken, abandoned to their fate, and whose beauty my distinguished forebear knew how to find amid the weeds and neglect. His little books, despite their, how shall I say, botanical trappings, are full of clever observations and from them one gets a rather decent idea of the Europe of his day, a Europe often in turmoil, whose storms on occasion reached the shores of the family castle, located near Gorlitz, as you’re likely aware. Of course, my forebear wasn’t oblivious to the storms, no more than he was oblivious to the vicissitudes of, how shall I say, the human condition. And so he wrote and published, and in his own way, humbly but in fine German prose, he raised his voice against injustice. I think he had little interest in knowing where the soul goes when the body dies, although he wrote about that too. He was interested in dignity and he was interested in plants. About happiness he said not a word, I suppose because he considered it something strictly private and perhaps, how shall I say, treacherous or elusive. He had a great sense of humor, although some passages of his books contradict me there. And since he wasn’t a saint or even a brave man, he probably did think about posterity. The bust, the equestrian statue, the folios preserved forever in a library. What he never imagined was that he would be remembered for lending his name to a combination of three flavors of ice cream.

At first glance the Bible appeared to be a collection of unrelated books of history, poetry, rituals, philosophy, biography, and prophecy held together only by a binder’s stitch and glue. But I only had to read Genesis 11 and 12 to realize that seemingly unrelated and different books of the Bible had a clear plot, a thread that tied together all the books, as well as the Old and the New Testaments. Sin had brought a curse upon all the nations of the earth. God called Abraham to follow him because he wanted to bless all the nations of the earth through Abraham’s descendants.6 It didn’t take long to realize that God’s desire to bless human beings begins in the very first chapter of Genesis and culminates in the last chapter of the last book with a grand vision of healing for all nations.7 The implication was obvious: The Bible was claiming that I should read it because it was written to bless my nation and me. The revelation that God wanted to bless my nation of India amazed me. I realized it was a prediction I could test. It would confirm or deny the Bible’s reliability. If the Bible is God’s word, then had he kept this word? Had he blessed “all the nations of the earth”? Had my country been blessed by the children of Abraham? If so, that would be a good reason for me, an Indian, to check out this book. My investigation of whether God had truly blessed India through the Bible yielded incredible discoveries: the university where I was studying, the municipality and democracy I lived in, the High Court behind my house and the legal system it represented, the modern Hindi that I spoke as my mother tongue, the secular newspaper for which I had begun to write, the army cantonment west of the road I lived on, the botanical garden to the east, the public library near our garden, the railway lines that intersected in my city, the medical system I depended on, the Agricultural Institute across town—all of these came to my city because some people took the Bible seriously.

The sixty acres of the estate were dotted with old and new summer houses and many fountains and white benches that came suddenly into sight from foliage-hung hiding-places; there was a great and constantly increasing family of white cats that prowled the many flower-beds and were silhouetted suddenly at night against the darkening trees. It was on one of the shadowy paths that Beatrice at last captured Amory, after Mr. Blaine had, as usual, retired for the evening to his private library. After reproving him for avoiding her, she took him for a long tête-a-tête in the moonlight. He could not reconcile himself to her beauty, that was mother to his own, the exquisite neck and shoulders, the grace of a fortunate woman of thirty. "Amory, dear," she crooned softly, "I had such a strange, weird time after I left you." "Did you, Beatrice?" "When I had my last breakdown"—she spoke of it as a sturdy, gallant feat. "The doctors told me"—her voice sang on a confidential note—"that if any many alive had done the consistent drinking that I have, he would have been physically shattered, my dear, and in his grave—long in his grave." Amory winced, and wondered how this would have sounded to Froggy Parker. "Yes," continued Beatrice tragically, "I had dreams—wonderful visions." She pressed the palms of her hands into her eyes. "I saw bronze rivers lapping marble shores, and great birds that soared through the air, parti-colored birds with iridescent plumage. I heard strange music and the flare of barbaric trumpets—what?" Amory had snickered. "What, Amory?" "I said go on, Beatrice." "That was all—it merely recurred and recurred—gardens that flaunted coloring against which this would be quite dull, moons that whirled and swayed, paler than winter moons, more golden than harvest moons——" "Are you quite well now, Beatrice?" "Quite well—as well as I will ever be. I am not understood, Amory. I know that can't express it to you, Amory, but—I am not understood." Amory was quite moved. He put his arm around his mother, rubbing his head gently against her shoulder.

That night, she was neglecting her pen in favor of rereading one of the most-favored books in her library. It was a small volume that had appeared mysteriously when she was only fifteen. Josephine still had no idea who had gifted her the lovely horror of Carmilla, but she owed her nameless benefactor an enormous debt. Her personal guess was a briefly employed footman who had seen her reading her mother’s well-worn copy of The Mysteries of Udolpho and confessed his own forbidden love of Poe. The slim volume of Le Fanu’s Gothic horror stories had been hidden well into adulthood. As it wasn’t her father’s habit to investigate her reading choices, concealment might have been more for dramatic effect than real fear of discovery. Josephine read by lamplight, curled into an old chaise and basking in the sweet isolation of darkness as she mouthed well-loved passages from her favorite vampire tale. “For some nights I slept profoundly; but still every morning I felt the same lassitude, and a languor weighed upon me all day. I felt myself a changed girl. A strange melancholy was stealing over me, a melancholy that I would not have interrupted. Dim thoughts of death began to open, and an idea that I was slowly sinking took gentle, and, somehow, not unwelcome possession of me.” She slammed the book shut. How had she turned so morbid? For while Josephine had long known she would not live to old age, she thought she had resigned herself to it. She made a point of fighting the melancholy that threatened her. If she had any regret, it was that she would not live long enough to write all the stories she wanted. Sometimes she felt a longing to shout them into the night, offering them up to any wandering soul that they might be heard so they could live. So many voices beating in her chest. So many tales to write and whisper and shout. Her eyes fell to the book she’d slammed shut. ‘“You are afraid to die?” “Yes, everyone is.” Josephine stood and pushed her way out of the glass house, into the garden where the mist enveloped her. She lifted her face to the moon and felt the tears cold on her cheeks. “‘ Girls are caterpillars,” she whispered, “‘ when they live in the world, to be finally butterflies when the summer comes; but in the meantime there are grubs and larvae, don’t you see?’” But the summer would never come for Josephine. She beat back the despair that threatened to envelop her. You are afraid to die? Yes, everyone is. She lifted her face and opened her eyes to the starry night, speaking her secret longing into the night. “‘ But to die as lovers may— to die together, so that they may live together.’” How she longed for love! For passion. How she ached to be seen. To be cherished. To be known. She could pour her soul onto the page and still find loneliness in the dark. She strangled her heart to keep it alive, knowing it was only a matter of time until the palest lover took her to his bosom. Already, she could feel the tightness in her chest. Tomorrow would not be a good day.

I don’t…believe you,” she lied, her blood running wild through her veins. His gleaming gaze impaled her. “Then believe this.” And suddenly his mouth was on hers. This was not what she’d set out to get from him. But oh, the joy of it. The heat of it. His mouth covered hers, seeking, coaxing. Without breaking the kiss, he pushed her back against the wall, and she grabbed for his shoulders, his surprisingly broad and muscular shoulders. As he sent her plummeting into unfamiliar territory, she held on for dear life. Time rewound to when they were in her uncle’s garden, sneaking a moment alone. But this time there was no hesitation, no fear of being caught. Glorying in that, she slid her hands about his neck to bring him closer. He groaned, and his kiss turned intimate. He used lips and tongue, delving inside her mouth in a tender exploration that stunned her. Enchanted her. Confused her. Something both sweet and alien pooled in her belly, a kind of yearning she’d never felt with Edwin. With any man but Dom. As if he sensed it, he pulled back to look at her, his eyes searching hers, full of surprise. “My God, Jane,” he said hoarsely, turning her name into a prayer. Or a curse? She had no time to figure out which before he clasped her head to hold her for another darkly ravishing kiss. Only this one was greedier, needier. His mouth consumed hers with all the boldness of Viking raiders of yore. His tongue drove repeatedly inside in a rhythm that made her feel all trembly and hot, and his thumbs caressed her throat, rousing the pulse there. Thank heaven there was a wall to hold her up, or she was quite sure she would dissolve into a puddle at his feet. Because after all these years apart, he was riding roughshod over her life again. And she was letting him. How could she not? His scent of leather and bergamot engulfed her, made her dizzy with the pleasure of it. He roused urges she’d never known she had, sparked fires in places she’d thought were frozen. Then his hands swept down her possessively as if to memorize her body…or mark it as belonging to him. Belonging to him. Oh, Lord! She shoved him away. How could she have fallen for his kisses after what he’d done? How could she have let him slip that far under her guard? Never again, curse him! Never! For a moment, he looked as stunned by what had flared between them as she. Then he reached for her, and she slipped from between him and the wall, panic rising in her chest. “You do not have the right to kiss me anymore,” she hissed. “I’m engaged, for pity’s sake!” As soon as her words registered, his eyes went cold. “It certainly took you long enough to remember it.” She gaped at him. “You have the audacity to…to…” She stabbed his shoulder with one finger. “You have no business criticizing me! You threw me away years ago, and now you want to just…just take me up again, as if nothing ever happened between us?” A shadow crossed his face. “I did not throw you away. You jilted me, remember?” That was the last straw. “Right. I jilted you.” Turning on her heel, she stalked back toward the road. “Just keep telling yourself that, since you’re obviously determined to believe your own fiction.” “Fiction?” He hurried after her. “What are you talking about?” “Oh, why can’t you just admit what you really did and be done with it?” Grabbing her by the arm, he forced her to stop just short of the street. He stared into her face, and she could see when awareness dawned in his eyes. “Good God. You know the truth. You know what really happened in the library that night.” “That you manufactured that dalliance between you and Nancy to force me into jilting you?” She snatched her arm free. “Yes, I know.” Then she strode out of the alley, leaving him to stew in his own juices.

[L]et the edifices of religions crumble, let a blind fire consume all the bricks in temples, mosques, and gurudwaras and churches, and on those ruins let us grow enchanting gardens of sweet-smelling flowers and build schools and libraries. Let places of worship be used for the good of people and be turned into hospitals, orphanages, schools and universities. Our new places of worship should be academies of art and cultures, centres of creativity and institutes of scientific research. Let the rice fields with golden grain bathed by the early rays of the sun, the open fields and rivers, and the deep sea be our new places of prayer. Let humanity be the other name for religion.

Moments ago she had been in the garden with Ash and Nora and Plato,

Books When Books Went to War, Molly Guptill Manning Books as Weapons, John B. Hench The Book Thieves: The Nazi Looting of Europe’s Libraries and the Race to Return a Literary Inheritance, Anders Rydell The Berlin Stories, Christopher Isherwood The Rise and the Fall of the Third Reich, William L. Shirer The Death of Democracy, Benjamin Carter Hett In the Garden of Beasts, Erik Larson Gay Berlin, Robert Beachy Articles Leary, William M. “Books, Soldiers and Censorship during the Second World War.” American Quarterly Von Merveldt, Nikola. “Books Cannot Be Killed by Fire: The German Freedom Library and the American Library of Nazi-Banned Books As Agents of Cultural Memory.” John Hopkins University Press Appelbaum, Yoni. “Publishers Gave Away 122,951,031 Books During World War II.” The Atlantic “Paris Opens Library of Books Burnt by Nazis.” The Guardian Archives Whisnant, Clayton J. “A Peek Inside Berlin’s Queer Club Scene Before Hitler Destroyed It.” The Advocate “Between World Wars, Gay Culture Flourished in Berlin.” NPR’s Fresh Air More The Great Courses: A History of Hitler’s Empire, Thomas Childers “Hitler: YA Fiction Fan Girl,” Robert Evans, Behind the Bastards Podcast Magnus Hirschfeld, Leigh Pfeffer and Gretchen Jones, History Is Gay Podcast “Das Lila Lied,” composed by Mischa Spoliansky, lyrics by Kurt Schwabach

I took time to examine the garments more carefully. Not only could they help clothe me for the summer, but they might also provide insights into the history of Whistling Tor. The library held the ink and parchment records set down by men. But that was only half the story. Women talked to their daughters and granddaughters, weaving memories. If no living women remained, one might still learn something from what they had left behind: a garden planted in a certain pattern, a precious possession set away with careful hands, a gravestone for a beloved pet. And clothing. I did not know who had owned these gowns, these delicate undergarments, but perhaps they had something to tell me.

If you spend your time chasing butterflies, they'll fly away. But if you spend your time making a beautiful garden, the butterflies will come. Don't chase, attract.

Rhys—it’s too much.” His face became deadly serious. “Not for you. Never for you.” He slid his arms around my waist, kissing my temple. “Build a house with a painting studio.” He kissed my other temple. “Build a house with an office for you, and one for me. Build a house with a bathtub big enough for two—and for wings.” Another kiss, this time to my cheek. “Build a house with rooms for all our family.” He kissed my other cheek. “Build a house with a garden for Elain, a training ring for the Illyrian babies, a library for Amren, and an enormous dressing room for Mor.” I choked on a laugh at that. But Rhys silenced it with a kiss to my mouth, lingering and sweet. “Build a house with a nursery, Feyre.

If Agnes ever noticed Alice's silence, she never said anything to break it. It was understood time spent in the garden was quiet time. Like a library, her mother once mused as she glided through her maidenhair ferns. Though Alice hadn't ever been to a library- to see more books in one place than she could imagine, or hear the whispers of collective pages turning- she almost felt she had, through her mother's stories. From Agnes's description, Alice imagined a library must be a quiet garden of books, where stories grew like flowers.

We will have to re-experience at a novelistic level of detail a whole set of scenes from our early life in which our problems around fathers and authority were formed. We will need to let our imaginations wonder back to certain moments that have been too unbearable to keep alive in a three-dimensional form in our active memories (the mind liking, unless actively prompted, to reduce most of what we’ve been through to headings rather than the full story, a document which it shelves in remote locations of the inner library). We need not only to know that we had a difficult relationship with our father, we need to relive the sorrow as if it were happening to us today. We need to be back in his book lined study when we would have been not more than six; we need to remember the light coming in from the garden, the corduroy trousers we were wearing, the sound of our father’s voice as it reached its pitch of heightened anxiety, the rage he flew into because we had not met his expectations, the tears that ran down our cheeks, the shouting that followed us as we ran out into the corridor, the feeling that we wanted to die and that everything good was destroyed. We need the novel, not the essay.

you do not go to a garden to watch the flowers grow you go to give thanks for what has already bloomed.

If you spend your time chasing butterflies, they'll fly away. But if you spend time making a beautiful garden, the butterflies will come.

Just like a city, parts of the Archives teemed with activity. The Scriptorium held rows of desks where scrivs toiled over translations or copied faded texts into new books with fresh, dark ink. The Sorting Hall buzzed with activity as scrivs sifted and reshelved books. The Buggery was not at all what I expected, thank goodness. Instead, it proved to be the place where new books were decontaminated before being added to the collection. Apparently all manner of creatures love books, some devouring parchment and leather, others with a taste for paper or glue. Bookworms were the least of them, and after listening to a few of Wilem’s stories I wanted nothing more than to wash my hands. Cataloger’s Mew, the Bindery, Bolts, Palimpsest, all of them were busy as beehives, full of quiet, industrious scrivs. But other parts of the Archives were quite the opposite of busy. The acquisitions office, for example, was tiny and perpetually dark. Through the window I could see that one entire wall of the office was nothing but a huge map with cities and roads marked in such detail that it looked like a snarled loom. The map was covered in a layer of clear alchemical lacquer, and there were notes written at various points in red grease pencil, detailing rumors of desirable books and the last known positions of the various acquisition teams. Tomes was like a great public garden. Any student was free to come and read the books shelved there. Or they could submit a request to the scrivs, who would grudgingly head off into the Stacks to find if not the exact book you wanted, then at least something closely related. But the Stacks comprised the vast majority of the Archives. That was where the books actually lived. And just like in any city, there were good neighborhoods and bad. In the good neighborhoods everything was properly organized and cataloged. In these places a ledger-entry would lead you to a book as simply as a pointing finger. Then there were the bad neighborhoods. Sections of the Archives that were forgotten, or neglected, or simply too troublesome to deal with at the moment. These were places where books were organized under old catalogs, or under no catalog at all. There were walls of shelves like mouths with missing teeth, where longgone scrivs had cannibalized an old catalog to bring books into whatever system was fashionable at the time. Thirty years ago two entire floors had gone from good neighborhood to bad when the Larkin ledger-books were burned by a rival faction of scrivs. And, of course, there was the four-plate door. The secret at the heart of the city. It was nice to go strolling in the good neighborhoods. It was pleasant to go looking for a book and find it exactly where it should be. It was easy. Comforting. Quick. But the bad neighborhoods were fascinating. The books there were dusty and disused. When you opened one, you might read words no eyes had touched for hundreds of years. There was treasure there, among the dross. It was in those places I searched for the Chandrian.

We added 810 (American), 840 (French) and 302.34 (friendship), and created our shelf of 1955.34-worthy books. Some favourites were Le Petit Prince, Little Women, The Secret Garden, Candide, The Long Winter, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Why did you marry him?'' 'Edwin? I don't really know. He was an architect. He came down to plan an addition to my father's library. I was only seventeen. I remember I'd just finished a novel in which the heroine was kissed in the rose garden and lived happily ever after. So when Edwin kissed me in the orchard...

Three trillion trees. They came to be on the third day of creation. That double-blessed day of verdant goodness. Three trillion trees, one became the wood upon which the son of God was hung. A tree created on the third day. The third day. The day of three trillion trees. And on the third day of new creation, the stone was rolled away. On the third day, the gardener walked again in the garden. On the third day, the first born emerged from a cocoon called death. On the third day a new world was born. There is the world that was, and the world to come, and between those two worlds is the wood upon which the son of God was hung.

The gore and glory of the public library’s mystery section along with PBS, Acorn TV, BritBox, and Hallmark Mysteries have sustained my habit ever since. With the mystery genre booming in print and on screen at present, I have had no problem satisfying no my cravings for crime.

And he smiled broader, and his eyes were full of kindness and concern, and Nora remembered what it was to care and be cared for. She followed her brother inside her flat to start tidying up, catching a glimpse of the clusters of irises in Mr Banerjee’s garden as she went. Flowers she hadn’t appreciated before, but which now mesmerised her with the most exquisite purple she had ever seen. As though the flowers weren’t just colours but part of a language, notes in a glorious floral melody, as powerful as Chopin, silently communicating the breathtaking majesty of life itself.

Whenever she walked home from the library and turned onto Magnolia Street, Kylie had no desire to be anywhere else. In every generation there was someone who stayed, who planted the garden early in the spring, and kept the bees, and switched on the porch light at twilight so the neighbors knew they were welcome to come for cures and elixirs. As it turned out, Kylie was quite good at magic. She took good care of the red Grimoire Franny had left for them, kept under lock and key in the greenhouse. All they had ever known and all they would need to know had been written down in it, and not a single line had been lost. Kylie was in residence on Magnolia Street, and by rights the book belonged to her now.

As the wise Cicero said, “If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

Whipped or ice cream on your dumplings?" she asked them, once the crust browned and the filling bubbled. She sprinkled additional cinnamon sugar on top. Grace and Cade responded as one, "Ice cream." Cade leaned his elbows on the table, cut her a curious look. "I didn't think we had a thing in common." She gave him a repressive look. "Ice cream doesn't make us friends." Amelia scooped vanilla bean into the bowls with the dumplings. Her smile was small, secret, when she served their dessert, and she commented, "Friendships are born of likes and dislikes. Ice cream is binding." Not as far as Grace was concerned. Cade dug into his dessert. Amelia kept the conversation going. "I bet you're more alike than you realize." Why would that matter? Grace thought. She had no interest in this man. A simultaneous "doubtful" surprised them both. Amelia kept after them, Grace noted, pointing out, "You were both born, grew up, and never left Moonbright." "It's a great town," Cade said. "Family and friends are here." "You're here," Grace emphasized. Amelia patted her arm. "I'm very glad you've stayed. Cade, too. You're equally civic-minded." Grace blinked. We are? "The city council initiated Beautify Moonbright this spring, and you both volunteered." We did? Grace was surprised. Cade scratched his stubbled chin, said, "Mondays, I transport trees and mulch from Wholesale Gardens to grassy medians between roadways. Flower beds were planted along the nature trails to the public park." Grace hadn't realized he was part of the community effort. "I help with the planting. Most Wednesdays." Amelia was thoughtful. "You're both active at the senior center." Cade acknowledged, "I've thrown evening horseshoes against the Benson brothers. Lost. Turned around and beat them at cards." "I've never seen you there," Grace puzzled. "I stop by in the afternoons, drop off large-print library books and set up audio cassettes for those unable to read because of poor eyesight." "There's also Build a Future," Amelia went on to say. "Cade recently hauled scaffolding and worked on the roof at the latest home for single parents. Grace painted the bedrooms in record time." "The Sutter House," they said together. Once again. "Like minds," Amelia mused, as she sipped her sparkling water.

In all the days that followed, I sometimes felt like I was dreaming. All my life, I had known I would marry the Gentle Lord, and all my life, I had expected it to be a horror and a doom. I had never thought that I would know love at all, much less in his arms. Now that every hour was a delight, I couldn't quite believe it was real. We still looked for an answer. We still hunted through the library and prowled the corridors. But it seemed less like a quest and more like a game. And we played in that house. We chased each other through the rose garden, hiding and seeking in turns; we built castles in a room full of sand; I made him sit in the kitchen while I tried to cook for him and set the pans on fire. And I was his delight and he was mine. I had read love poems when studying the ancient tongues, though I had never sought them out like Astraia; I had learnt the rhythm of the words and phrases, but I had always thought them empty decorations. They said that love was terrifying and tender, wild and sweet, and none of it made any sense. But now I knew that every mad word was true. For Ignifex was still himself, still mocking and wild and inhuman, terrible as a legion arrayed for war; but in my arms he became gentle, and his kisses were sweeter than wine.

He’s my friend, he is,’ said the old man. ‘There aren’t any other robins in the garden, so he’s a bit lonely.’ He spoke in strong Yorkshire dialect, so Mary had to listen carefully to understand him. She looked very hard at the robin. ‘I’m lonely too,’ she said. She had not realized this before.

In every great city, with all its gleaming walls and massive libraries, with all the shimmering fountains and sculptured gardens, there is a superfluity of dung that must be carted out.

HAWAII is drawing a line in the sand, right where it hopes to build a presidential library for native son President Obama. The oceanfront library would have a dramatic view of the Diamond Head volcanic crater and Hawaii’s abundant sunshine would generate solar power to support on-site vegetable gardens. "You can’t beat waterfront land in Honolulu, with all due respect for the other cities," Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) said Thursday.

As Borges himself showed us in so many stories — "The Aleph", "The Garden of Forking Paths", "The Gift", "Blue Tigers", "Shakespeare's Memory" — a blessing is always a mixed blessing. As Borges noted sadly, he inherited a library, and blindness; we who study Borges inherit great sight, yet the rest of the library somehow fades. (pg 303, "What I Lost When I Translated Jorge Luis Borges")