classes ::: library, archetype,
children :::
branches ::: the Librarian

bookmarks: Instances - Definitions - Quotes - Chapters - Wordnet - Webgen


object:the Librarian
class:library
class:archetype


--- DIALOGUE
  J: I request what is the best book in this Library?
  TL: And your interpretation of the word best?
  J: The Book. The book to which all other books are attempts or imitations. The Book Supreme. The book that is of all genres. That contains as if the universe. The Book in which a scientist learns Science, a philosopher Philosophy, a poet Poetry, a mathematician Math, the theologian God. The Book of Knowledge, Love, Works, Beauty, Goodness. The Book that contains the story of God, his laws and processes, his Path, his intent and goal.
  TL: Such a book, you cannot yet read. For a sentence herein is a Collected Works on Earth. For few on earth have read more than a couple lines and laboured to express the Truth of a couple lines. It is the last book one reads, and your eyes are likely to not read from it this life.
  J: Would you not provide me with a line or two? That I may hold an image of the goal before me as I study throughout the ages? Or if not, what do you suggest for my case?
  TL: You have been given already the 132. And the crowning Book of the Milennia.. You would need to know the language of the Divine Spheres to read the Book of God that informs the Gods and Angels. Its script could seem to you a beauty of such horror that you may never wish to read again. So request another book, or read first those that have been given. For you know the encryptions of Savitri, will apply herein a thousand-fold.. But being at 12 of 132.. I will find for you a word or two, or show you case inwhich it is wrapped, or a letter of the title.
  And regardless, if you can find the book, you may see for yourself.
  But the Book is kept covered to protect seeking eyes from being consumed by the Flame.
  One must be able to hold first an ocean in ones consciousness.

    When desire and self are not,
    When the Soul is all in front,
    When one fears no experience,
    When all books are one book,
    and all words Divine terms,
    and all characters Divine script.
    One may read of the Book of God.



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now begins generated list of local instances, definitions, quotes, instances in chapters, wordnet info if available and instances among weblinks


OBJECT INSTANCES [0] - TOPICS - AUTHORS - BOOKS - CHAPTERS - CLASSES - SEE ALSO - SIMILAR TITLES

TOPICS
SEE ALSO


AUTH

BOOKS

IN CHAPTERS TITLE

IN CHAPTERS CLASSNAME

IN CHAPTERS TEXT
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Dunwich_Horror
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Shadow_over_Innsmouth
1.hs_-_The_Essence_of_Grace
1.lovecraft_-_Waste_Paper-_A_Poem_Of_Profound_Insignificance
A_Secret_Miracle
BOOK_I._--_PART_I._COSMIC_EVOLUTION
The_Library_of_Babel
The_Library_Of_Babel_2

PRIMARY CLASS

archetype
library
SIMILAR TITLES
the Librarian

DEFINITIONS


TERMS STARTING WITH


TERMS ANYWHERE



QUOTES [1 / 1 - 144 / 144]


KEYS (10k)

   1 Laura Whitcomb

NEW FULL DB (2.4M)

   21 Terry Pratchett
   4 Umberto Eco
   4 Michael Moore
   4 Marilyn Johnson
   4 Kate Morton
   4 Carlos Ruiz Zaf n
   3 Scott Douglas
   3 Lev Grossman
   3 Joseph Fink
   2 Seth Godin
   2 Scott Hawkins
   2 Robert A Heinlein
   2 Rick Riordan
   2 Neil Gaiman
   2 Neal Stephenson
   2 M T Anderson
   2 Molly Harper
   2 Kurt Vonnegut
   2 Jose Ortega y Gasset
   2 Emily Winfield Martin

1:The library smells like old books - a thousand leather doorways into other worlds. I hear silence, like the mind of God. I feel a presence in the empty chair beside me. The librarian watches me suspiciously. But the library is a sacred place, and I sit with the patron saint of readers. Pulsing goddess light moves through me for one moment like a glimpse of eternity instantly forgotten. She is gone. I smell mold, I hear the clock ticking, I see an empty chair. Ask me now and I'll say this is just a place where you can't play music or eat. She's gone. The library sucks.
   ~ Laura Whitcomb,

*** WISDOM TROVE ***

1:As a child, my number one best friend was the librarian in my grade school. I actually believed all those books belonged to her. ~ erma-bombeck, @wisdomtrove
2:The librarian isn't a clerk who happens to work in a library. A librarian is a data hound, a guide, a sherpa and a teacher. The librarian is the interface between reams of data and the untrained but motivated user. ~ seth-godin, @wisdomtrove
3:I went to the librarian and asked for a book about stars... . And the answer was stunning. It was that the Sun was a star but really close. The stars were suns, but so far away they were just little points of light... . The scale of the universe suddenly opened up to me. It was a kind of religious experience. There was a magnificence to it, a grandeur, a scale which has never left me. Never ever left me. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove

*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

1:You get all sorts of people in the library, and the librarian gets it all. ~ Terry Pratchett,
2:I'm just the librarian. I can only give you the books. I can't give you the answers. ~ Kami Garcia,
3:The librarian is the interface between reams of data and the untrained but motivated user. ~ Seth Godin,
4:You’d rather be known as the librarian who carries her cat in her gym bag?” she retorted. ~ Sofie Kelly,
5:After all, it's the librarian's sworn purpose to bring books together with their one true reader. ~ Kate Morton,
6:After all, it’s the librarian’s sworn purpose to bring books together with their one true reader. ~ Kate Morton,
7:The librarian, Ms. Glenda, has been there for ions. She has an uncanny memory for name and faces. ~ Ellery Adams,
8:After all, it’s the librarian’s sworn purpose to bring books together with their one true reader. I ~ Kate Morton,
9:The human mind was a deep and abiding mystery and the Librarian was glad he didn't have one anymore. ~ Terry Pratchett,
10:I slammed the book shut and and crowed, 'And that is why you don't kick the librarian off the investigation! ~ Jim C Hines,
11:The Librarian liked being best man. You were allowed to kiss bridesmaids, and they weren't allowed to run away. ~ Terry Pratchett,
12:To find out what a story's really about," the Librarian said, "you don't ask the writer. You ask the reader. ~ Emily Winfield Martin,
13:As a child, my number one best friend was the librarian in my grade school. I actually believed all those books belonged to her. ~ Erma Bombeck,
14:To find out what a story's really about,' the Librarian said, 'you don't ask the writer. You ask the reader. ~ Emily Winfield Martin,
15:The librarian thought the problem was just that the right books weren’t breeding with each other and proposed a forced mating program. ~ Lev Grossman,
16:The problem of the librarian is that books are multi-dimensional in their subject matter but must be ordered on one-dimensional shelves. ~ Neal Stephenson,
17:Libraries are being remade as interesting maker spaces, with the librarian playing more of the role of the teacher of inquiry-based learning, ~ Warren Berger,
18:She loved the library and was anxious to worship the lady in charge. But the librarian had other things on her mind. She hated children anyhow. ~ Betty Smith,
19:Do you know the best thing about broken hearts?' the librarian asked.
I shook my head.
'They can only break once. The rest is just scratches. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n,
20:Do you know the best thing about broken hearts?” the librarian asked. I shook my head. “They can only really break once. The rest is just scratches. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n,
21: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. ~ Terry Pratchett,
22:There was a reminder that the library was always seeking books, and that they paid in wine. The librarian, François Diallo, was also the newspaper’s ~ Emily St John Mandel,
23:Do you know the best thing about broken hearts?" the librarian asked.
I shook my head.
"They can only really break once. The rest is just scratches. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n,
24:Do you know the best thing about broken hearts?' the librarian asked.
I shook my head.
'They can only really break once. The rest is just scratches. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n,
25:There are distinct duties of a poet laureate. I plan a reading series at the Library of Congress and advise the librarian. The rest is how I want to promote poetry ~ Rita Dove,
26:The librarian's mission should be, not like up to now, a mere handling of the book as an object, but rather a know how (mise au point) of the book as a vital function. ~ Jose Ortega y Gasset,
27:It took me awhile to learn the rules. OK, it took the librarian in me weeks of careful obsessive research to learn the rules. There was a label maker involved. I'd rather not go into it. ~ Molly Harper,
28:It took me a while to learn the rules. OK, it took the librarian in me weeks of careful, obsessive research to learn the rules. There was a label maker involved. I’d rather not go into it. ~ Molly Harper,
29: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. ~ Terry Pratchett,
30: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. ~ Terry Pratchett,
31:The librarian had imagined he could summon a given book to perch on his hand just by shouting out its call number, but in actuality they were just too willful, and some were actively predatory. The ~ Lev Grossman,
32:I thought research would be more glamorous, somehow. I'd give the librarian a secret code word and he'd give me the one book I needed and whisper the necessary page numbers. Like a speakeasy. With books. ~ Libba Bray,
33:No, no, said the librarian, forgiven for being alive, for being in the world. For the arrogance and the futility of remaining alive, the ridiculousness of it, the stench of it, the unreasonableness of it. ~ Miriam Toews,
34:Banks aren't neutral observers, they're ... the people who caused the mess. It's like someone who's wet themselves in a public building insisting they choose which mop the librarian fetches to clear up the puddle. ~ Mark Steel,
35:The librarian isn't a clerk who happens to work in a library. A librarian is a data hound, a guide, a sherpa and a teacher. The librarian is the interface between reams of data and the untrained but motivated user. ~ Seth Godin,
36:The school board banned one of Maya Angelou's books, so the librarian had to take down her poster.

I fished it out of the trash.

She must be a great writer if the school board is scared of her. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson,
37: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 ~ Terry Pratchett,
38:Ghostly, in his mind, Ben heard the librarian reading to the little ones: Who is that trip-trapping upon my bridge? The children lean forward, all the old fascination glistening in their eyes: will the monster be bested . . . or will It feed? ~ Stephen King,
39:It makes logical sense that 168 is a greater number than 17, so why would you shelve 168 first? Because a librarian is always right. To the common man, this looks wrong, but to the librarian, this is right, because a librarian is never wrong. ~ Scott Douglas,
40:– No SF novel ever won the Booker, growls a prowling clansman on his way into the SF Café.
The librarian swings a shotgun from inside her longcoat, blasts the bullshit axiom from the air. Screw the Booker, she thinks. She’d rather have a hookah. ~ Hal Duncan,
41:The librarian is a caricature of librarian - short white hair, horn-rimmed glasses, a bosom you could hide Christmas presents under and a New England-tight-ass face that looks like she hasn's taken a shit since her family came over on the Mayflower. ~ Bart Yates,
42: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. ~ Terry Pratchett,
43:A book is a fragile creature, it suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the elements and clumsy hands. so the librarian protects the books not only against mankind but also against nature and devotes his life to this war with the forces of oblivion. ~ Umberto Eco,
44:It was as though I had been dying of thirst and the librarian had handed me a five gallon bucket of water. I drank and drank. The only reason I am here and not in prison is because of that woman. I was a loser, but she showed me the power of reading. ~ Gary Paulsen,
45: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. ~ Terry Pratchett,
46:The librarian thought the problem was just that the right books weren’t breeding with each other and proposed a forced mating program. The library committee had an epic secret meeting about the ethics of literary eugenics which ended in a furious deadlock. ~ Lev Grossman,
47:That's the duty of the old,' said the Librarian, 'to be anxious on the behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old.'

They sat for a while longer, and then parted, for it was late, and they were old and anxious. ~ Philip Pullman,
48:am the librarian at the Monastery Saint-Martin. It is a simple monastery. A good place. Life there runs smoothly. At least, it did, until William arrived. William was delivered to us as a baby. We get many infants that way. They are the sons of wealthy lords ~ Adam Gidwitz,
49:She either confused me with a much older child or else she glimpsed deep inside my soul and perceived a hole that needed filling. I've always chosen to believe the latter. After all, it's the librarian's sworn purpose to bring books together with their one true reader. ~ Kate Morton,
50:The librarian spoke in a reverential whisper. Corliss knew she'd misjudged this passionate woman. Maybe she dressed poorly, but she was probably great in bed, certainly believed in God and goodness, and kept an illicit collection of overdue library books on her shelves. ~ Sherman Alexie,
51:What were the requirements for using the Language? That the Librarian using it should be able to name and describe what they wanted to happen, and that the Librarian should have the strength to compel reality to change itself. And that the universe could hear her words. ~ Genevieve Cogman,
52: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. ~ Terry Pratchett,
53:Pimps make the best librarians. Psycho killers, the worst. Ditto con men. Gangsters, gunrunners, bank robbers- adept at crowd control, at collaborating with a small staff, at planning with deliberation and executing with contained fury- all possess the librarian's basic skill set. ~ Avi Steinberg,
54:I got up and went into the library to see how much I owed them.
The librarian said $32 even and you've owed it for eighteen years. I didn't deny anything. Because I don't understand how time passes. I have had those books. I have often thought of them. The library is only two blocks away. ~ Grace Paley,
55:Remember, if confronted by a librarian while looking for a book to check out, do not attempt to escape by climbing a tree. There are no trees in the library and the precious moments it will take you to look around and realize this will allow the librarian to strike. Don't become a statistic. ~ Joseph Fink,
56:The coming decades are likely to challenge much of what we think we know about what progress is, and about who we are in relation to the rest of nature. Can you think, or act, like the librarian of a monastery through the Dark Ages, guarding the old books as empires rise and fall outside? ~ Paul Kingsnorth,
57:At this time on a weekday morning, the library was refuge to the retired, the unemployed, and the unemployable. ... 'I'm not always this gabby,' the librarian said. 'It's just so nice to talk to someone who isn't constructing a conspiracy theory or watching videos of home accidents on YouTube. ~ Myla Goldberg,
58:Last year in a library in Alaska I read a folk tale in a random book on a random shelf & have been thinking about it since & today I wrote the librarian w/ no book title or author & in 2 hrs I had a scan of the story & cover in my inbox -- Librarians should be running everything. [Twitter] ~ Jon Klassen,
59:Kyle was busy helping Holmes figure out that the Red-Headed League was just a clever ploy pulled by some robbers to get a red-haired pawnbroker to leave his shop long enough for them to dig a tunnel from his basement to the bank next door when the librarian’s voice jolted him out of London and brought ~ Chris Grabenstein,
60: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. ~ Terry Pratchett,
61:Listen to me, Bill," Richard said. "Let the librarian be your new best friend. If you like what she's given you to read, trust her. The library, the theater, a passion for novels and plays - well, Bill, this could be the door to your future. At your age, I lived in a library! Now novels and plays are my life. ~ John Irving,
62:It was immediately clear that the book had been undisturbed for a very long time, perhaps even since it had been laid to rest. The librarian fetched a checked duster, and wiped away the dust, a black, thick, tenacious Victorian dust, a dust composed of smoke and fog particles accumulated before the Clean Air acts. ~ A S Byatt,
63: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? ~ Terry Pratchett,
64:I began to see it was the community, not the librarian, that was important to the library. Librarians were only as important as the community they inspired. If I was going to continue with this career, my job wouldn’t be to protect information, it would be to bring the community together and inspire them to appreciate everything a library stands for. ~ Scott Douglas,
65:If you want to look at a Detroit Free Press published since 2000," the reference librarian said, "you can use a database."
"I'll be right over."
"Come ahead. Unless you want to access it from your own computer."
"I can do that?"
"Certainly." The librarian explained how, and she didn't even sound condescending. Librarians are wonderful people. ~ JoAnna Carl,
66: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. ~ Terry Pratchett,
67:In Trout's novel, The Pan-Galactic Memory Bank, the hero is on a space ship two hundred miles long and sixty-two miles in diameter. He gets a realistic novel out of the branch library in his neighborhood. He reads about sixty pages of it, and then he takes it back. The librarian asks him why he doesn't like it, and he says to her, 'I already know about human beings. ~ Kurt Vonnegut,
68:Here, then, is the point at which I see the new mission of the librarian rise up incomparably higher than all those preceding. Up until the present, the librarian has been principally occupied with the book as a thing, as a material object. From now on he must give his attention to the book as a living function. He must become a policeman, master of the raging book. ~ Jose Ortega y Gasset,
69:Rares claps his hands. “When you’re finished, dear heart, feel free to leave the books on the table, as disorganized as you possibly can.” He motions to a table behind me, situated in a break in the rows of books. “The librarian in residence in charge of the Library of Clarisse is an offensively irritable man, and I would like nothing better than to make unnecessary work for him. ~ Sara Raasch,
70:You must consider that the librarian (if not overworked or neurotic) is happy when he can demonstrate two things: the quality of his memory and erudition and the richness of his library, especially if it is small. The more isolated and disregarded the library, the more the librarian is consumed with sorrow for its underestimation. A person who asks for help makes the librarian happy. ~ Umberto Eco,
71:I did remember. The librarian had picked me up and held me to her chest as we evacuated beneath the flashing fire alarm. I'd felt so safe and nonflammable between her breasts.
"So what's that got to do with you?" I asked.
"I knew you liked her," Luke said. "So I set that up."
"You pulled the alarm?" I asked, shocked.
"No!" Luke protested. Then he grinned. "I set the fire. ~ Flynn Meaney,
72:I went to the librarian and asked for a book about stars... and the answer was stunning. It was that the Sun was a star but really close. The stars were suns, but so far away they were just little points of light. The scale of the universe suddenly opened up to me. It was a kind of religious experience. There was a magnificence to it, a grandeur, a scale which has never left me. Never ever left me. ~ Carl Sagan,
73:...a book is a fragile creature, it suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the elements, clumsy hands. If for a hundred and a hundred years everyone had been able freely to handle our codices, the majority of them would no longer exist. So the librarian protects them not only against mankind but also against nature, and devotes his life to this war with the forces of oblivion, the enemy of truth. ~ Umberto Eco,
74:I went to the librarian and asked for a book about stars.... And the answer was stunning. It was that the Sun was a star but really close. The stars were suns, but so far away they were just little points of light.... The scale of the universe suddenly opened up to me. It was a kind of religious experience. There was a magnificence to it, a grandeur, a scale which has never left me. Never ever left me. ~ Carl Sagan,
75: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. ~ Terry Pratchett,
76:There are official searchers, inquisitors. I have seen them in the performance of their function: they always arrive extremely tired from their journeys; they speak of a broken stairway which almost killed them; they talk with the librarian of galleries and stairs; sometimes they pick up the nearest volume and leaf through it, looking for infamous words. Obviously, no one expects to discover anything. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,
77: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. ~ Terry Pratchett,
78: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. ~ Terry Pratchett,
79:A library is a place to go for a reality check, a bracing dose of literature, or a "true reflection of our history," whether it's a brick-and-mortar building constructed a century ago or a fanciful arrangement of computer codes. The librarian is the organizer, the animating spirit behind it, and the navigator. Her job is to create order out of the confusion of the past, even as she enables us to blast into the future. ~ Marilyn Johnson,
80:If I’d told the librarian the truth, which was that I thought her idea stunk up the joint because when I grew up I was going to keep being exactly what I already was—an eavesdropper, liar, shoplifter, cat burglar, poison-pen writer extraordinaire, and top-notch blackmailer—because she goes to Mass at St. Catherine’s Church, the same way most everybody around here does, I’m pretty sure that’d get around the neighborhood in nothing flat. “Yes. ~ Lesley Kagen,
81:I was so inspired by Dr. King that in 1956 with my brothers and sisters and first cousins, I was only 16 years old, we went down to the public library trying to check out some books and we were told by the librarian that the library was for whites only and not for colors! It was a public library! I never went back to that public library until July 5th, 1998, by this time I'm in the Congress, for a book signing of my book "Walking with the Wind" ~ John Lewis,
82:The librarian’s body, lying on the slab, is smaller than I’d expected. If she were a book and not a woman, you’d say she was quite foxed. She’s been read in the bath a few times in her life, and the steam has done her dust jacket no kind of good at all. Many of her pages have been folded down and up again, and you couldn’t call her a recent printing by any means, but even so she’s a handsome edition, bound in dark brown with an elegant design. ~ Nick Harkaway,
83:The popular director of OWI was Elmer Davis, an ex-CBS radioman with an admiration for the wire services and Murrow. Working closely with the Librarian of Congress, the poet Archibald MacLeish, who headed the Office of Facts and Figures, Davis believed that truth was the smartest type of propaganda. This was in stark contrast to the Axis nations, which banned opposition newspapers, censored stories, and screened every dispatch. Fortunately, ~ Douglas Brinkley,
84:I hadn’t expected her to have a home. Not her—them, there is a them. I’d always pictured Enola as solitary, but she’s perfectly paired. They pass cards back and forth like it’s speaking. I have no such language, though the librarian I was had decimals, everything a classification. What would they be? The 400s for the language, 300s for the sociology, 900s for the history of her, us; though something about them begs for the 200s and religious fervor. ~ Erika Swyler,
85:Pimps make the best librarians. Psycho killers, the worst. Ditto conmen. Gangsters, gun runners, bank robbers – adept at crowd control, at collaborating with a small staff, at planning with deliberation and executing with contained fury – all possess the librarian’s basic skill set. Scalpers and loan sharks certainly have a role to play. But even they lack that something, the je ne sais quoi, the elusive it. What would a pimp call it? Yes: the love. ~ Avi Steinberg,
86: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. ~ Terry Pratchett,
87:Libraries. How I love them. My source of stories. And solitude. Where the musty smell of books greets me like the perfume in our grandmother’s embrace. My old branch was two blocks from our London flat, and I went almost daily. The librarian and I both got teary when I said goodbye. And this library is almost as close! I’ll get a library card tomorrow and carry back my first installment of books. Maybe I can also find a quiet corner to write in peace. ~ Mitali Perkins,
88:I agree with Kilgore Trout about realistic novels and their accumulations of nit-picking details. In Trout’s novel, The Pan-Galactic Memory Bank, the hero is on a space ship two hundred miles long and sixty-two miles in diameter. He gets a realistic novel out of the branch library in his neighborhood. He reads about sixty pages of it, and then he takes it back. The librarian asks him why he doesn’t like it, and he says to her, “I already know about human beings. ~ Kurt Vonnegut,
89:Libraries are like houses of worship: Whether or not you use them yourself, it's important to know that they are there. In many ways they define a society and the values of that society. Librarians to me are the keepers of the flame of knowledge. When I was growing up, the librarian in my local library looked like a meek little old lady, but after you spent some time with her, you realized she was Athena with a sword, a wise and wonderful repository of wisdom. ~ Jane Stanton Hitchcock,
90:Personally, I felt pretty safe. Librarians are like priests. You can tell them you want information on just about any subject and they never look at you weird. It's like a rule or something. I figured even in a small town like this, my question wouldn't be the strangest one the librarian had heard. I didn't know if librarians had any sort of official privacy code, but I was counting on confidence. They're not big talkers. It comes from being forced to be quiet all the time. ~ Eileen Cook,
91:With reference to viral infections,” the Librarian says, “if I may make a fairly blunt, spontaneous cross-reference—something I am coded to do at opportune moments—you may wish to examine herpes simplex, a virus that takes up residence in the nervous system and never leaves. It is capable of carrying new genes into existing neurons and genetically reengineering them. Modern gene therapists use it for this purpose. Lagos thought that herpes simplex might be a modern, benign descendant of Asherah. ~ Neal Stephenson,
92:You must overcome any shyness and have a conversation with the librarian, because he can offer you reliable advice that will save you much time. You must consider that the librarian (if not overworked or neurotic) is happy when he can demonstrate two things: the quality of his memory and erudition and the richness of his library, especially if it is small. The more isolated and disregarded the library, the more the librarian is consumed with sorrow for its underestimation. A person who asks for help makes the librarian happy. ~ Umberto Eco,
93:The other option was to go to the public library. Few people came back from a visit to the library. There was one girl a few years ago the survived the summer reading program at the Night Vale Public Library. The girl, Tamika Flynn, defeated the librarian that had imprisoned her and her classmates using the switchblade hidden in every hardback edition of Eudora Welty's touching homecoming novel, The Optimist's Daughter. But few who have seen a librarian up close have survived or been in a physical condition to communicate. ~ Joseph Fink,
94:There’s something deep in the heart of every person that wants
to protect culture. The only thing about my pending career that
was changed because of 9/11 was that I began to see it was the community,
not the librarian, that was important to the library. Librarians
were only as important as the community they inspired. If I
was going to continue with this career, my job wouldn’t be to protect
information, it would be to bring the community together and
inspire them to appreciate everything a library stands for. ~ Scott Douglas,
95:Excuse me?”
The librarian looked up again.
“I need help now. I need to print this article and . . . do you have any books about dukes?”
The librarian’s eyes went wide and she rubbed her hands together with glee. “We have a fantastic romance section,” she said. “Do you need recommendations? How do you like your dukes? Grumpy? Tortured? Alpha, beta, or alpha in the streets, beta in the sheets?”
“Actually, I meant nonfiction,” Portia said glumly.
The librarian sighed. “Aye. Just a warning, love—the non-fic dukes are not nearly as fun. ~ Alyssa Cole,
96:Bureaucracy holds out at least the possibility of dealing with other human beings in ways that do not demand either party has to engage in all those complex and exhausting forms of interpretive labor described in the first essay in this book, where just as you can simply place your money on the counter and not have to worry about what the cashier thinks of how you're dressed, you can also pull out your validated photo ID card without having to explain to the librarian why you are so keen to read about homoerotic themes in eighteenth century British verse. ~ David Graeber,
97:I mean, I've never been thinking that if you're a fan you have to buy everything that somebody puts out. I mean, you've got a choice. If you don't want it, just don't buy it. It's also a reaction to YouTube and sharing of files. A lot of it is really bad sound, really low quality. So the librarian in me wants it at least to exist there so that in 20 years when I'm sitting in my rocking chair, it will still exist in the best sound quality possible, even though it only sold 1000 units or whatever. As much as I love the whole pirate kind of thing, the quality suffers. ~ Bjork,
98:Okay. That’s smooth. Ask the librarian for a library card. Best pickup line I’ve heard yet.” “How do you know it’s a pickup line?” “It isn’t?” She arches an eyebrow. “No, it most definitely is but since I foresee coming to the library frequently in the future, I’ll take the card too.” She purses her cherry stained lips to contain a smile and bends her head to read the information on my license as she fills out the card application. “I’m afraid to ask why you’ll be coming to the library frequently.” “Because I’ll want to fuck you here,” I answer matter of factly. ~ Ella Goode,
99:The library smells like old books — a thousand leather doorways into other worlds. I hear silence, like the mind of God. I feel a presence in the empty chair beside me. The librarian watches me suspiciously. But the library is a sacred place, and I sit with the patron saint of readers. Pulsing goddess light moves through me for one moment like a glimpse of eternity instantly forgotten. She is gone. I smell mold, I hear the clock ticking, I see an empty chair. Ask me now and I'll say this is just a place where you can't play music or eat. She's gone. The library sucks. ~ Laura Whitcomb,
100:The library smells like old books - a thousand leather doorways into other worlds. I hear silence, like the mind of God. I feel a presence in the empty chair beside me. The librarian watches me suspiciously. But the library is a sacred place, and I sit with the patron saint of readers. Pulsing goddess light moves through me for one moment like a glimpse of eternity instantly forgotten. She is gone. I smell mold, I hear the clock ticking, I see an empty chair. Ask me now and I'll say this is just a place where you can't play music or eat. She's gone. The library sucks.
   ~ Laura Whitcomb,
101: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. ~ Terry Pratchett,
102:Braille! You didn’t know much about it, except that it was the language of the blind, as you told Mom. You listened to the librarian impassively, as if you were hearing about a book you hadn’t yet read. The librarian said they wanted your permission. If the librarian hadn’t said “permission,” you might not have agreed to go to the Braille library. That word “permission” moved you: blind people wanted to read your book, they were asking for your permission to recreate your book in a language only they could communicate through.… You answered, “Sure,” suddenly feeling powerless. ~ Kyung Sook Shin,
103:I could go on and on with the intimate details about the various lives of people on the super-ambulance, but what good is more information?

I agree with Kilgore Trout about realistic novels and their accumulations of nit-picking details. In Trout's novel, 'The Pan-Galactic Memory Bank,' the hero is on a space ship two hundred miles long and sixty-two miles in diameter. He gets a realistic novel out of the branch library in his neighborhood. He reads about sixty pages of it, and then he takes it back.

The librarian asks him why he doesn't like it, and he says to her, 'I already know about human beings. ~ Kurt Vonnegut,
104:Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.

The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.

The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.

Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.

She does not understand.
When I get on my knees and lick her hand,
she screams.

I am a new man.
I snarl at her and bark.
I romp with joy in the bookish dark. ~ Mark Strand,
105:You have got to stop writing in the library books," Tyson said.
"I will if you stop looking at me like I just kicked a kitten," I replied, sliding the offending book away from him. "I couldn't help it. Someone needs to edit these things."
He sat back in the library chair. "Yeah, they're called editors and they already did that."
I snorted. "Please. I could drive a truck through the holes in your education."
"We're here about your education, not mine." He actually lowered his forehead to bang it on the table. The librarian sent me a stern glance.
"What?" I said. "I'm not the one giving myself a lobotomy. ~ Alyxandra Harvey,
106: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. ~ Terry Pratchett,
107:When Maurice Duplessis came to power in 1944, it was the start of a critical period in Quebec’s political history. People would later call that period the ‘Great Darkness.’ The Duplessis administration was first and foremost about anticommunism, the use of strong-arm tactics against trade unions, and an invincible political machine. His party often enjoyed the very active support of the Roman Catholic Church in electoral campaigns. And you know how powerful the Church is, miss…” Lucie pushed Alice’s photo toward the librarian. “And what does this have to do with these orphans? How is this little eight-year-old girl involved in all this? ~ Franck Thilliez,
108:But about the drip drip of long-haul, no-end-in-sight solitude, they know nothing. They don't know what it is to construct an entire weekend around a visit to the laundrette. Or to sit in a darkened flat on Halloween night, because you can't bear to expose your bleak evening to a crowd of jeering trick-or-treaters. Or to have the librarian smile pityingly and say, ‘Goodness, you're a quick reader!’ when you bring back seven books, read from cover to cover, a week after taking them out. They don't know what it is to be so chronically untouched that the accidental brush of a bus conductor's hand on your shoulder sends a jolt of longing straight to your groin. ~ Zo Heller,
109:I’m sure Vera would be happy to help you with any research.”
He paused with his fork halfway to his mouth. “Vera, the librarian? I think I’d like to avoid her as much as possible, although that was some fascinating stuff she shared the other day about bats.”
I tried to recall which stuff she’d said about bats. I’d heard it all so many times, it was simply back-ground noise. “She has a long-standing and well-intentioned fixation on the island’s bat shortage, but sometimes she’s a little, um… tedious.”
“Oh, I don’t know about tedious,” he said casually. “Personally, I found all that stuff about how fruit bats perform fellatio to be quite educational. ~ Tracy Brogan,
110:I look up when a man sits down across from me. Logan smiles, his breaths heavy. He props his head on his chin and blinks his pretty blue eyes at me. “Would your boyfriend be mad if I sit here with you?” he asks, his grin almost contagious. “My boyfriend would kick your ass,” I say as seriously as I can. But a laugh escapes me. I look around when the librarian raps her desk with a ruler. I sign to Logan instead. My boyfriend will kick your ass, I say again. You might want to get out of here. He’s a mean SOB when he’s provoked. He laughs with no sound. God, he’s so handsome when he smiles. And when he’s not smiling. And when he’s sleeping. And when he’s awake. And when he’s breathing. ~ Tammy Falkner,
111:In the library
I search for a good book.
We have many books,
says Mrs. Rose, the librarian,
and ALL of them are good.
Of course she says that. It's her job.
But do I want to read about
Trucks
Trains and
Transport?
Or even
Horses
Houses and
Hyenas?

In the fiction corner
there are pink boks
full of princesses
and girls who want to be princesses
and black books
about bad boys
and brave boys
and brawny boys.

Where is the book
about a girl
whose poems don't rhyme
and whose Granny is fading?
Pearl, says Mrs. Rose, the bell has rung.

I go back to class
empty-handed
empty headed
empty-hearted. ~ Sally Murphy,
112:The librarian was explaining the benefits of the Dewey decimal system to her junior--benefits that extended to every area of life. It was orderly, like the universe. It had logic. It was dependable. Using it allowed a kind of moral uplift, as one's own chaos was also brought under control.

'Whenever I am troubled,' said the librarian, 'I think about the Dewey decimal system.'

'Then what happens?' asked the junior, rather overawed.

'Then I understand that trouble is just something that has been filed in the wrong place. That is what Jung was explaining of course--as the chaos of our unconscious contents strive to find their rightful place in the index of consciousness. ~ Jeanette Winterson,
113:In stories, when someone behaves uncharacteristically, we take it as a meaningful, even pivotal moment. If we are surprised again and again, we have to keep changing our minds, or give up and disbelieve the writer. In real life, if people think they know you well enough not only to say, 'It's Tuesday, Amy must be helping out at the library today,' but well enough to say to the librarian, after you've left the building, 'You know, Amy just loves reading to the four-year-olds, I think it's been such a comfort for her since her little boy died'—if they know you like that, you can do almost anything where they can't see you, and when they hear about it, they will, as we do, simply disbelieve the narrator. ~ Amy Bloom,
114:So the Sumerians worshipped Enki, and the Babylonians, who came after the
Sumerians, worshipped Marduk, his son."
"Yes, sir. And whenever Marduk got stuck, he would ask his father Enki for
help. There is a representation of Marduk here on this stele -- the Code of
Hammurabi. According to Hammurabi, the Code was given to him personally by
Marduk."
Hiro wanders over to the Code of Hammurabi and has a gander. The cuneiform
means nothing to him, but the illustration on top is easy enough to understand.
Especially the part in the middle:
"Why, exactly, is Marduk handing Hammurabi a one and a zero in this picture?"
Hiro asks.
"They were emblems of royal power," the Librarian says. "Their origin is
obscure. ~ Neal Stephenson,
115:The library smells like old books—a thousand leather doorways into other worlds.” Mr. Brown paused and glanced up at the room, but especially at James for one moment. “I hear silence, like the mind of God. I feel a presence in the empty chair beside me. The librarian watches me suspiciously. But the library is a sacred place, and I sit with the patron saint of readers.” Mr. Brown paused as he stared at the page, and then read, “Pulsing goddess light moves through me for one moment like—” Here Mr. Brown paused again. “Like a glimpse of eternity instantly forgotten. She is gone. I smell mold, I hear the clock ticking, I see an empty chair. Ask me now and I’ll say this is just a place where you can’t play music or eat. She’s gone. The library sucks. ~ Laura Whitcomb,
116:The library was still giving trouble: a few books in some of the more obscure corners of the stacks retained some autonomy, dating back to an infamous early experiment with flying books, and lately they'd begun to breed. Shocked undergraduates had stumbled on books in the very act.
Which sounded interesting, but so far the resulting offspring had either been predictably derivative (in fiction) or stunningly boring (nonfiction); hybrid pairings between fiction and nonfiction were the most vital. The librarian thought the problem was just that the right books weren't breeding with each other and proposed a forced mating program. The library committee had an epic secret meeting about the ethics of literary eugenics which ended in a furious deadlock. ~ Lev Grossman,
117:The librarian, whom I had never seen before, presided over the library like a watchdog, one of those poor dogs who are deliberately made vicious by being chained up and given little to eat; ot better, like the old, toothless cobra, pale because of centuries of darkness, who guards the king's treasure in the Jungle Book. Paglietta, poor woman, was little less than a lusus naturae: she was small, without breasts or hips, waxen, wilted, and monstrously myopic; she wore glasses so thick and concave that, looking at her head-on, her eyes, light blue, almost white, seemed very far away, stuck at the back of her cranium. She gave the impression of never having been young, although she was certainly not more than thirty, and of having been born there, in the shadows, in that vague odor of mildew and stale air. ~ Primo Levi,
118:PAPER TOWERS
The library was on the second floor of the House, not far from my room. It had two floors—the first held the majority of the books and a balcony wrapped in a wrought-iron railing held another set. It was a cavalcade of tomes, all in immaculate rows, and with study carrels and tables thrown in for good measure. It was my home away from home(away from home.
I walked inside and paused for a moment to breathe in the scent of paper and dust—the perfumes of knowledge. The library was empty of patrons as far as I could tell, but I could hear the rhythmic squeal of a library cart somewhere in the rows. I followed them down until I found the dark-haired vampire shelving books with mechanical precision. I knew him only as “the librarian.” He was a fount of information, and he had a penchant for leaving books outside my door. ~ Chloe Neill,
119: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. ~ Terry Pratchett,
120:There was a grumpy librarian in the library. I could tell that he was the librarian because he seemed to be made of books. I told him that we needed information, and he got us some butterfly nets and sent us up to the top floor of the library.

I wondered why we were carrying nets. Valentine didn't know.

The book I wanted was pretty obvious. It was called A History of Everything.

Finding it was easy. Catching it, however, was not. The moment I reached for it, the whole shelfful of books took off into the air, fluttering like pigeons, and suddenly I knew what the butterfly nets were for.

I waved the net about and eventually I caught A History of Everything. As soon as I'd got it, all the rest of the books flapped back to their shelf, all except one, a little red-covered book, which fluttered over my head happily. ~ Neil Gaiman,
121: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. ~ Terry Pratchett,
122:I probably coughed self-pityingly in response, little aware that I was about to cross a tremendous threshold beyond which there would be no return, that in my hands I held an object whose simple appearance belied its profound power. All true readers have a book, a moment, like the one I describe, and when Mum offered me that much-read library copy mine was upon me. For although I didn't know it then, after falling deep inside the world of the Mud Man, real life was never going to be able to compete with fiction again. I've been grateful to Miss Perry ever sense, for when she handed that novel over the counter and urged my harried mother to pass it on to me, she'd either confused me with a much older child or else she'd glimpsed deep inside my soul and perceived a hole that needed filling. I've always chosen to believe the latter. After all, it's the librarian's sworn purpose to bring books together with their one true reader. ~ Kate Morton,
123:The formalities necessary to obtain a work were quite complicated; the borrower's form had to contain the book's title, format, publication date, edition number, and the author's name- in other words, unless one was already informed, one could not become so. At the bottom, spaces were left to indicate the borrower's age, address, profession, and purpose of research. Michel obeyed these regulations and handed his properly filled-out form to the librarian sleeping at his desk; following his example, the pages were snoring loudly on chairs set around the wall; their functions had become a sinecure as complete as those of the ushers at the Comedie-Francaise. The librarian, waking with a start, stared at the bold young man; he read the form and appeared to be stupefied at the request; after much deliberation, to Michel's alarm, he sent the latter to a subordinate official working near his own window, but at a separate little desk... ~ Jules Verne,
124:He Said EYE-RACK

Relative to our plans for your country,
we will blast your tree, crush your cart,
stun your grocery.
Amen sisters and brothers,
give us your sesame legs,
your satchels, your skies.
Freedom will feel good
to you too. Please acknowledge
our higher purpose. Now, we did not see
your bed of parsley. On St. Patrick's Day
2003, President Bush wore a blue tie. Blinking hard
he said, "reckless aggression."
He said, "the danger is clear."
Your patio was not visible in his frame.
Your comforter stuffed with wool
from a sheep you knew. He said, "We are
against the lawless men who
rule your country, not you." Tell that
to the mother, the sister, the bride,
the proud boy, the peanut-seller,
the librarian careful with her shelves.
The teacher, the spinner, the sweeper,
the invisible village, the thousands of people
with laundry and bread, the ants tunneling
through the dirt. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye,
125:/Farsi Now that I have raised the glass of pure wine to my lips, The nightingale starts to sing! Go to the librarian and ask for the book of this bird's songs, and Then go out into the desert. Do you really need college to read this book? Break all your ties with people who profess to teach, and learn from the Pure Bird. From Pole to Pole the news of those sitting in quiet solitude is spreading. On the front page of the newspaper, the alcoholic Chancellor of the University Said: "Wine is illegal. It's even worse than living off charity." It's not important whether we drink Gallo or Mouton Cadet: drink up! And be happy, for whatever our Winebringer brings is the essence of grace. The stories of the greed and fantasies of all the so-called "wise ones" Remind me of the mat-weavers who tell tourists that each strand is a yarn of gold. Hafiz says: The town's forger of false coins is also president of the city bank. So keep quiet, and hoard life's subtleties. A good wine is kept for drinking, never sold. [1512.jpg] -- from Drunk on the Wine of the Beloved: 100 Poems of Hafiz, by Thomas Rain Crowe

~ Hafiz, The Essence of Grace
,
126:I came to view the world as a word puzzle and, with no special aptitude I can name, fixed on the whys and wherefores of language from my earliest days. Song lyrics. Signs. The stories read in first and second grades. My parents almost always read to us at bedtime. Poems by Whittier. Scenes from Oliver Twist. Kidnapped. Treasure Island. The names alone intrigued me. Dr. Livesey, Squire Trelawney. The name Balfour sounded the knell of the romantic. Robinson Crusoe. I loved to hear read the exploits of Natty Bumppo. Authors had an aura of the godlike to me. The Latin prayers fascinated me as an altar boy. I can still recall carved names on buildings I saw from the MTA train when I was a youngster. Who can explain why? Words were magic to me. I once inadvisably glued my finger and thumb together at the Magoun Library in fourth grade trying to amuse a pretty little girl on whom I had a crush, and when the librarian came over angrily to inquire what the problem was and I pointed with a shrug and replied, “Mucilage”—a word that always made me laugh—she very coldly stated, “You are more to be pitied than censured. ~ Alexander Theroux,
127:Never mind, Mrs. Hertzog, don’t worry about it. You don’t have the information I need.” Chelsea smirked at the woman and then pretended to salute her, a dismissal if Violet had ever seen one.
To her credit, Mrs. Hertzog didn’t react to Chelsea’s lack of respect. Instead she issued a veiled warning: “All right, but if you change your mind, I’ll be right over there.”
Chelsea’s eyes narrowed as she watched the librarian walk away. “Thanks a lot, Violet. Aren’t you supposed to have my back or something?”
“For what? The big throw down? Were you planning to fight her? Besides, she likes me. Why should I get on her bad side just because you are?”
“As long as you guys are still tight, right, Vi?” Chelsea drawled. “Seriously, though, I need to figure out a way to get Mike Russo to notice me.”
“I’m pretty sure he’s noticed you.”
“You know what I mean.” Chelsea huffed. “By the way, what’s up with the uptight lady and the hot dude at your car yesterday? And by ‘hot,’ I mean dark and dangerous, of course. Please tell me they’re some distant relatives come to tell you you’ve inherited a family fortune or something. I could use some good news. ~ Kimberly Derting,
128:So in the library there are also books containing falsehoods. ...”

“Monsters exist because they are part of the divine plan, and in the horrible features of those same monsters the power of the Creator is revealed. And by divine plan, too, there exist also books by wizards, the cabalas of the Jews, the fables of pagan poets, the lies of the infidels. It was the firm and holy conviction of those who founded the abbey and sustained it over the centuries that even in books of falsehood, to the eyes of the sage reader, a pale reflection of the divine wisdom can shine. And therefore the library is a vessel of these, too. But for this very reason, you understand, it cannot be visited by just anyone. And furthermore,” the abbot added, as if to apologize for the weakness of this last argument, “a book is a fragile creature, it suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the elements, clumsy hands. If for a hundred and a hundred years everyone had been able freely to handle our codices, the majority of them would no longer exist. So the librarian protects them not only against mankind but also against nature, and devotes his life to this war with the forces of oblivion, the enemy of truth. ~ Umberto Eco,
129:How’s that beer?” Jack asked, dishtowel in hand, eyeing the nearly empty glass. “I’m good,” Ian said. “Just let me know,” he said, turning away. “Ah,” Ian said, getting his attention but not exactly calling him back. Jack turned, lifted an eyebrow. Silent. “She tell you to leave me alone?” A small huff of laughter escaped Jack. “Pal, the first thing you learn when you open a bar—talk if they talk, shut up if they don’t.” Ian tilted his head. Maybe he could stand this place once in a while. “She tried to explain me to the librarian in Eureka as an idiot savant.” Jack smiled and Ian felt an odd sensation—it was a funny story; he liked sharing a funny story. He used to make the guys laugh when he wasn’t making them work. “She tell you she was looking for me?” “She did.” For some reason unclear even to him, Ian did something he hadn’t done since finding himself in these mountains—he pushed on it a little bit. “She tell you anything about me?” “Couple of things.” “Like?” “Like, you and me—we were in Fallujah about the same time.” “Should’ve known. You have that jarhead look about you. Just so you’re clear—I don’t talk about that time.” Jack smiled lazily. “Just so you’re clear, neither do I.” * ~ Robyn Carr,
130:To make matters worse, some of the books had actually become migratory. In the nineteenth century Brakebills had appointed a librarian with a highly Romantic imagination who had envisioned a mobile library in which books fluttered from shelf to shelf like birds, reorganizing themselves spontaneously under their own pwer in response to searches. For the first few months the effect was sadi to have been quite dramatic. A painteding the scned survived as a mural behind the circulation desk, with enormaous atlases soaring around the place like condors.
But the system turned out to be totally impractical. The wear and tear o the spines alone was too costly, and the books were horribly disobedient. The librarian had imagined he could summon a given book to perch on his hand just by shouting out its call number, but in actuality they were just too willful, and some were actively predatory. The librarian was swiftly dposed, and his successor set about domesticating the books again, but even now there were stragglers, notably in Swiss History and Architecture 300-1399, that stubbornly flapped around near the ceiling. Once in a while an entire sub—sub-category that had long been thought safely dormant would take wing with an indescribably papery susurrus. ~ Lev Grossman,
131:At the time, I paid no heed to the emblem above the door of a compass crossed with a square; the library had been founded by Masons. There, in the quiet shadows, I read for hours from the books that the kind librarian allowed me to take from the shelves: fairy tales, adventure stories, adaptations of classics for children, and dictionaries of symbols. One day while browsing among the shelves I ran across a yellowed volume: Les Tarots by Eteilla. All my efforts to read it were in vain. The letters looked strange and the words were incomprehensible. I began to worry that I had forgotten how to read. When I communicated my anguish to the librarian, he began to laugh. “But how could you understand it; it’s written in French, my young friend! I can’t understand it either!” Oh, how I felt drawn to those mysterious pages! I flipped through them, seeing many numbers, sums, the frequent occurrence of the word Thot, some geometric shapes . . . but what fascinated me most was a rectangle inside which a princess, wearing a three-pointed crown and seated on a throne, was caressing a lion that was resting its head on her knees. The animal had an expression of profound intelligence combined with an extreme gentleness. Such a placid creature! I liked the image so much that I committed a transgression that I still have not repented: I tore out the page and brought it home to my room. Concealed beneath a floorboard, the card “STRENGTH” became my secret treasure. In the strength of my innocence, I fell in love with the princess. ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky,
132:In many parts of the world, you will find people of the
same ethnic group, living a few miles apart in similar valleys under similar
conditions, speaking languages that have absolutely nothing in common with each
other. This sort of thing is not an oddity -- it is ubiquitous. Many linguists
have tried to understand Babel, the question of why human language tends to
fragment, rather than converging on a common tongue?" "Has anyone come up with
an answer yet?"
"The question is difficult and profound," the Librarian says. "Lagos had a
theory."
"Yes?"
"He believed that Babel was an actual historical event. That it happened in a
particular time and place, coinciding with the disappearance of the Sumerian
language. That prior to Babel Infopocalypse, languages tended to converge. And
that afterward, languages have always had an innate tendency to diverge and
become mutually incomprehensible -- that this tendency is, as he put it, coiled
like a serpent around the human brainstem."
"The only thing that could explain that is --" Hiro stops, not wanting to say
it.
"Yes?" the Librarian says.
"If there was some phenomenon that moved through the population, altering their
minds in such a way that they couldn't process the Sumerian language anymore.
Kind of in the same way that a virus moves from one computer to another,
damaging each computer in the same way. Coiling around the brainstem."
"Lagos devoted much time and effort to this idea," the Librarian says. "He felt
that the nam-shub of Enki was a neurolinguistic virus. ~ Neal Stephenson,
133: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. ~ Terry Pratchett,
134:You see, Brother William,” the abbot said, “to achieve the immense and holy task that enriches those walls”—and he nodded toward the bulk of the Aedificium, which could be glimpsed from the cell’s windows, towering above the abbatial church itself—“devout men have toiled for centuries, observing iron rules. The library was laid out on a plan which has remained obscure to all over the centuries, and which none of the monks is called upon to know. Only the librarian has received the secret, from the librarian who preceded him, and he communicates it, while still alive, to the assistant librarian, so that death will not take him by surprise and rob the community of that knowledge. And the secret seals the lips of both men. Only the librarian has, in addition to that knowledge, the right to move through the labyrinth of the books, he alone knows where to find them and where to replace them, he alone is responsible for their safekeeping. The other monks work in the scriptorium and may know the list of the volumes that the library houses. But a list of titles often tells very little; only the librarian knows, from the collocation of the volume, from its degree of inaccessibility, what secrets, what truths or falsehoods, the volume contains. Only he decides how, when, and whether to give it to the monk who requests it; sometimes he first consults me. Because not all truths are for all ears, not all falsehoods can be recognized as such by a pious soul; and the monks, finally, are in the scriptorium to carry out a precise task, which requires them to read certain volumes and not others, and not to pursue every foolish curiosity that seizes them, whether through weakness of intellect or through pride or through diabolical prompting. ~ Umberto Eco,
135:Has he called you at all?” Violet asked, even though she already knew the answer. Chelsea would have exploded with joy if he had.
“No,” Chelsea answered glumly, and then she snapped her gum, earning herself another scowl from the librarian. She ignored the scolding look. “And I don’t get it. I’ve given him my best material, including the I’m-easy-and-you-can-totally-have-me bedroom eyes. What’s he waiting for?” Chelsea stopped talking and dropped her face into her open history book. “Look out, crazy librarian at nine o’clock.”
By the time Mrs. Hertzog reached them, Chelsea was pretending to be interested in her assignment, filling in the dates on her paper as if it were the most fascinating homework in the world. Although Violet was almost certain that the War of 1812 hadn’t occurred in 1776.
“Miss Morrison, do I need to remind you that you’re supposed to be working? Your teacher sent you down here to study, not to socialize.” She smiled sweetly at Violet. Chelsea’s gaze narrowed as she glared, first at Violet and then at Mrs. Hertzog. But, wisely, she kept her mouth shut. “If you need help finding reference material,” Mrs. Hertzog offered, glancing over the answers on Chelsea’s paper, “I’d be happy to point you in the right direction…”
Chelsea swallowed, and Violet suspected she’d just swallowed her gum, since gum was a library no-no, before answering. “No, thanks. I think I’ve got it covered.” She smiled, trying for sweet but getting closer to sour. “Unless you have any information on the Russo family?”
“What Russo family?” the librarian challenged, as if it were highly unlikely that Chelsea was really interested in “research.”
She was, just not the kind of research she could do at the library. ~ Kimberly Derting,
136:There was a small public library on Ninety-third and Hooper. Mrs. Stella Keaton was the librarian. We’d known each other for years. She was a white lady from Wisconsin. Her husband had a fatal heart attack in ’34 and her two children died in a fire the year after that. Her only living relative had been an older brother who was stationed in San Diego with the navy for ten years. After his discharge he moved to L.A. When Mrs. Keaton had her tragedies he invited her to live with him. One year after that her brother, Horton, took ill, and after three months he died spitting up blood, in her arms. All Mrs. Keaton had was the Ninety-third Street branch. She treated the people who came in there like her siblings and she treated the children like her own. If you were a regular at the library she’d bake you a cake on your birthday and save the books you loved under the front desk. We were on a first-name basis, Stella and I, but I was unhappy that she held that job. I was unhappy because even though Stella was nice, she was still a white woman. A white woman from a place where there were only white Christians. To her Shakespeare was a god. I didn’t mind that, but what did she know about the folk tales and riddles and stories colored folks had been telling for centuries? What did she know about the language we spoke? I always heard her correcting children’s speech. “Not ‘I is,’ she’d say. “It’s ‘I am.’” And, of course, she was right. It’s just that little colored children listening to that proper white woman would never hear their own cadence in her words. They’d come to believe that they would have to abandon their own language and stories to become a part of her educated world. They would have to forfeit Waller for Mozart and Remus for Puck. They would enter a world where only white people spoke. And no matter how articulate Dickens and Voltaire were, those children wouldn’t have their own examples in the house of learning—the library. ~ Walter Mosley,
137:All philosophies are either
monist or dualist. Monists believe that the material world is the only world --
hence, materialists. Dualists believe in a binary universe, that there is a
spiritual world in addition to the material world."
"Well, as a computer geek, I have to believe in the binary universe."
The Librarian raises his eyebrows. "How does that follow?"
"Sorry. It's a joke. A bad pun. See, computers use binary code to represent
information. So I was joking that I have to believe in the binary universe,
that I have to be a dualist."
"How droll," the Librarian says, not sounding very amused. "Your joke may not
be without genuine merit, however."
"How's that? I was just kidding, really."
"Computers rely on the one and the zero to represent all things. This
distinction between something and nothing -- this pivotal separation between
being and nonbeing -- is quite fundamental and underlies many Creation myths."
Hiro feels his face getting slightly warm, feels himself getting annoyed. He
suspects that the Librarian may be pulling his leg, playing him for a fool. But
he knows that the Librarian, however convincingly rendered he may be, is just a
piece of software and cannot actually do such things.
"Even the word 'science' comes from an Indo-European root meaning 'to cut' or
'to separate.' The same root led to the word 'shit,' which of course means to
separate living flesh from nonliving waste. The same root gave us 'scythe' and
'scissors' and 'schism,' which have obvious connections to the concept of
separation."
"How about 'sword'?"
"From a root with several meanings. One of those meanings is 'to cut or
pierce.' One of them is 'post' or 'rod.' And the other is, simply, 'to speak.'"
"Let's stay on track," Hiro says.
"Fine. I can return to this potential conversation fork at a later time, if you
desire."
"I don't want to get all forked up at this point. ~ Neal Stephenson,
138:Being alone is not the most awful thing in the world. You visit your museums and cultivate your interests and remind yourself how lucky you are not to be one of those spindly Sudanese children with flies beading their mouths. You make out To Do lists - reorganise linen cupboard, learn two sonnets. You dole out little treats to yourself - slices of ice-cream cake, concerts at Wigmore Hall. And then, every once in a while, you wake up and gaze out of the window at another bloody daybreak, and think, I cannot do this anymore. I cannot pull myself together again and spend the next fifteen hours of wakefulness fending off the fact of my own misery.

People like Sheba think that they know what it's like to be lonely. They cast their minds back to the time they broke up with a boyfriend in 1975 and endured a whole month before meeting someone new. Or the week they spent in a Bavarian steel town when they were fifteen years old, visiting their greasy-haired German pen pal and discovering that her hand-writing was the best thing about her. But about the drip drip of long-haul, no-end-in-sight solitude, they know nothing. They don't know what it is to construct an entire weekend around a visit to the laundrette. Or to sit in a darkened flat on Halloween night, because you can't bear to expose your bleak evening to a crowd of jeering trick-or-treaters. Or to have the librarian smile pityingly and say, ‘Goodness, you're a quick reader!’ when you bring back seven books, read from cover to cover, a week after taking them out. They don't know what it is to be so chronically untouched that the accidental brush of a bus conductor's hand on your shoulder sends a jolt of longing straight to your groin. I have sat on park benches and trains and schoolroom chairs, feeling the great store of unused, objectless love sitting in my belly like a stone until I was sure I would cry out and fall, flailing, to the ground. About all of this, Sheba and her like have no clue. ~ Zo Heller,
139:And I read something else," Jacob goes on. "There was this discussion of the story of Cain and Abel, from the Bible. After Cain kills his brother, God says, 'The bloods of your brother call out to me.' Not blood. Bloods. Weird, right? So the Talmud tries to explain it."

"I can explain it," says William. "The scribe was drunk."

"William!" cries Jeanne. "The Bible is written by God!"

"And copied by scribes," the big boy replies. "Who get drunk. A lot. Trust me."

Jacob is laughing. "The rabbis have a different explanation. The Talmud says it's 'bloods' because Cain didn't only spill Abel's blood. He spilled the blood of Abel and all the descendants he never had."

"Huh!"

"And then it says something like, 'Whoever destroys a single life destroys the whole world. And whoever saves a single life saves the whole world."

There are sheep in the meadow beside the road. Gwenforte walks up to the low stone wall, and one sheep--a ram--doesn't run away. They sniff each other's noses. Her white fur beside the ram's wool--two textures, two colors, both called white in our inadequate language.

Jeanne is thinking about something. At last, she shares it. "William, you said that it takes a lifetime to make a book."

"That's right."

"One book? A whole lifetime?"

William nods. "A scribe might copy out a single book for years. An illuminator would then take it and work on it for longer still. Not to mention the tanner who made the parchment, and the bookbinder who stitched the book together, and the librarian who worked to get the book for the library and keep it safe from mold and thieves and clumsy monks with ink pots and dirty hands. And some books have authors, too, like Saint Augustine or Rabbi Yehuda. When you think about it, each book is a lot of lives. Dozens and dozens of them."

Dozens and dozens of lives," Jeanne says. "And each life a whole world."

"We saved five books," says Jacob. "How many worlds is that?"

William smiles. "I don't know. A lot. A whole lot. ~ Adam Gidwitz,
140:Computers speak machine language," Hiro says. "It's written in ones and zeroes
-- binary code. At the lowest level, all computers are programmed with strings
of ones and zeroes. When you program in machine language, you are controlling
the computer at its brainstem, the root of its existence. It's the tongue of
Eden. But it's very difficult to work in machine language because you go crazy
after a while, working at such a minute level. So a whole Babel of computer
languages has been created for programmers: FORTRAN, BASIC, COBOL, LISP, Pascal,
C, PROLOG, FORTH. You talk to the computer in one of these languages, and a
piece of software called a compiler converts it into machine language. But you
never can tell exactly what the compiler is doing. It doesn't always come out
the way you want. Like a dusty pane or warped mirror. A really advanced hacker
comes to understand the true inner workings of the machine -- he sees through
the language he's working in and glimpses the secret functioning of the binary
code -- becomes a Ba'al Shem of sorts."
"Lagos believed that the legends about the tongue of Eden were exaggerated
versions of true events," the Librarian says. "These legends reflected
nostalgia for a time when people spoke Sumerian, a tongue that was superior to
anything that came afterward."
"Is Sumerian really that good?"
"Not as far as modern-day linguists can tell," the Librarian says. "As I
mentioned, it is largely impossible for us to grasp. Lagos suspected that words
worked differently in those days. If one's native tongue influences the
physical structure of the developing brain, then it is fair to say that the
Sumerians -- who spoke a language radically different from anything in existence
today -- had fundamentally different brains from yours. Lagos believed that for
this reason, Sumerian was a language ideally suited to the creation and
propagation of viruses. That a virus, once released into Sumer, would spread
rapidly and virulently, until it had infected everyone."
"Maybe Enki knew that also," Hiro says. "Maybe the nam-shub of Enki wasn't such
a bad thing. Maybe Babel was the best thing that ever happened to us. ~ Neal Stephenson,
141:Why, exactly, is Marduk handing Hammurabi a one and a zero in this picture?"
Hiro asks.
"They were emblems of royal power," the Librarian says. "Their origin is
obscure."
"Enki must have been responsible for that one," Hiro says.
"Enki's most important role is as the creator and guardian of the me and the
gis-hur, the 'key words' and 'patterns' that rule the universe."
"Tell me more about the me."
"To quote Kramer and Maier again, '[They believed in] the existence from time
primordial of a fundamental, unalterable, comprehensive assortment of powers and
duties, norms and standards, rules and regulations, known as me, relating to the
cosmos and its components, to gods and humans, to cities and countries, and to
the varied aspects of civilized life.'"
"Kind of like the Torah."
"Yes, but they have a kind of mystical or magical force. And they often deal
with banal subjects -- not just religion."
"Examples?"
"In one myth, the goddess Inanna goes to Eridu and tricks Enki into giving her
ninety-four me and brings them back to her home town of Uruk, where they are
greeted with much commotion and rejoicing."
"Inanna is the person that Juanita's obsessed with."
"Yes, sir. She is hailed as a savior because 'she brought the perfect execution
of the me.'"
"Execution? Like executing a computer program?"
"Yes. Apparently, they are like algorithms for carrying out certain activities
essential to the society. Some of them have to do with the workings of
priesthood and kingship. Some explain how to carry out religious ceremonies.
Some relate to the arts of war and diplomacy. Many of them are about the arts and crafts: music, carpentry, smithing, tanning, building, farming, even such
simple tasks as lighting fires."
"The operating system of society."
"I'm sorry?"
"When you first turn on a computer, it is an inert collection of circuits that
can't really do anything. To start up the machine, you have to infuse those
circuits with a collection of rules that tell it how to function. How to be a
computer. It sounds as though these me served as the operating system of the
society, organizing an inert collection of people into a functioning system."
"As you wish. In any case, Enki was the guardian of the me."
"So he was a good guy, really."
"He was the most beloved of the gods."
"He sounds like kind of a hacker. ~ Neal Stephenson,
142:What cannot be resolved inside the psyche,” put in the Expedition alienist, Otto Ghloix, “must enter the outside world and become physically, objectively ‘real.’ For example, one who cannot come to terms with the, one must say sinister unknowability of Light, projects an Æther, real in every way, except for its being detectable.” “Seems like an important property to be missing, don’t you think? Puts it in the same class as God, the soul—” “Fairies under mushrooms,” from a heckler somewhere in the group, whom nobody, strangely, seemed quite able to locate. Icelanders, however, had a long tradition of ghostliness that made the Brits appear models of rationalism. Earlier members of the Expedition had visited the great Library of Iceland behind the translucent green walls facing the sunlit sea. Some of these spaces were workshops or mess-halls, some centers of operation, stacked to the top of the great cliff, easily a dozen levels, probably more. Among the library shelves could be found The Book of Iceland Spar, commonly described as “like the Ynglingasaga only different,” containing family histories going back to the first discovery and exploitation of the eponymic mineral up to the present, including a record of each day of this very Expedition now in progress, even of days not yet transpired. “Fortune-telling! Impossible!” “Unless we can allow that certain texts are—” “Outside of time,” suggested one of the Librarians. “Holy Scripture and so forth.” “In a different relation to time anyhow. Perhaps even to be read through, mediated by, a lens of the very sort of calcite which according to rumor you people are up here seeking.” “Another Quest for another damned Magic Crystal. Horsefeathers, I say. Wish I’d known before I signed on. Say, you aren’t one of these Sentient Rocksters, are you?” Mineral consciousness figured even back in that day as a source of jocularity—had they known what was waiting in that category . . . waiting to move against them, grins would have frozen and chuckles turned to dry-throated coughing. “Of course,” said the Librarian, “you’ll find Iceland spar everywhere in the world, often in the neighborhood of zinc, or silver, some of it perfectly good for optical instruments. But up here it’s of the essence, found in no other company but its own. It’s the genuine article, and the sub-structure of reality. The doubling of the Creation, each image clear and believable. . . . And you being mathematical gentlemen, it can hardly have escaped your attention that its curious advent into the world occurred within only a few years of the discovery of Imaginary Numbers, which also provided a doubling of the mathematical Creation. ~ Thomas Pynchon,
143:shelves; hundreds of narrow rows. Hermione took out a list of subjects and titles she had decided to search while Ron strode off down a row of books and started pulling them off the shelves at random. Harry wandered over to the Restricted Section. He had been wondering for a while if Flamel wasn’t somewhere in there. Unfortunately, you needed a specially signed note from one of the teachers to look in any of the restricted books, and he knew he’d never get one. These were the books containing powerful Dark Magic never taught at Hogwarts, and only read by older students studying advanced Defense Against the Dark Arts. “What are you looking for, boy?” “Nothing,” said Harry. Madam Pince the librarian brandished a feather duster at him. “You’d better get out, then. Go on — out!” Wishing he’d been a bit quicker at thinking up some story, Harry left the library. He, Ron, and Hermione had already agreed they’d better not ask Madam Pince where they could find Flamel. They were sure she’d be able to tell them, but they couldn’t risk Snape hearing what they were up to. Harry waited outside in the corridor to see if the other two had found anything, but he wasn’t very hopeful. They had been looking for two weeks, after all, but as they only had odd moments between lessons it wasn’t surprising they’d found nothing. What they really needed was a nice long search without Madam Pince breathing down their necks. Five minutes later, Ron and Hermione joined him, shaking their heads. They went off to lunch. “You will keep looking while I’m away, won’t you?” said Hermione. “And send me an owl if you find anything.” “And you could ask your parents if they know who Flamel is,” said Ron. “It’d be safe to ask them.” “Very safe, as they’re both dentists,” said Hermione. Once the holidays had started, Ron and Harry were having too good a time to think much about Flamel. They had the dormitory to themselves and the common room was far emptier than usual, so they were able to get the good armchairs by the fire. They sat by the hour eating anything they could spear on a toasting fork — bread, English muffins, marshmallows — and plotting ways of getting Malfoy expelled, which were fun to talk about even if they wouldn’t work. Ron also started teaching Harry wizard chess. This was exactly like Muggle chess except that the figures were alive, which made it a lot like directing troops in battle. Ron’s set was very old and battered. Like everything else he owned, it had once belonged to someone else in his family — in this case, his grandfather. However, old chessmen weren’t a drawback at all. Ron knew them so well he never had trouble getting them to do what he wanted. Harry played with chessmen Seamus Finnigan had lent him, and they didn’t ~ J K Rowling,
144:When the time comes, & I hope it comes soon, to bury this era of moral rot & the defiling of our communal, social, & democratic norms, the perfect epitaph for the gravestone of this age of unreason should be Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley's already infamous quote:
"I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing... as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.”
Grassley's vision of America, quite frankly, is one I do not recognize. I thought the heart of this great nation was not limited to the ranks of the plutocrats who are whisked through life in chauffeured cars & private jets, whose often inherited riches are passed along to children, many of whom no sacrifice or service is asked. I do not begrudge wealth, but it must come with a humility that money never is completely free of luck. And more importantly, wealth can never be a measure of worth.
I have seen the waitress working the overnight shift at a diner to give her children a better life, & yes maybe even take them to a movie once in awhile - and in her, I see America.
I have seen the public school teachers spending extra time with students who need help & who get no extra pay for their efforts, & in them I see America.
I have seen parents sitting around kitchen tables with stacks of pressing bills & wondering if they can afford a Christmas gift for their children, & in them I see America.
I have seen the young diplomat in a distant foreign capital & the young soldier in a battlefield foxhole, & in them I see America.
I have seen the brilliant graduates of the best law schools who forgo the riches of a corporate firm for the often thankless slog of a district attorney or public defender's office, & in them I see America.
I have seen the librarian reshelving books, the firefighter, police officer, & paramedic in service in trying times, the social worker helping the elderly & infirm, the youth sports coaches, the PTA presidents, & in them I see America.
I have seen the immigrants working a cash register at a gas station or trimming hedges in the frost of an early fall morning, or driving a cab through rush hour traffic to make better lives for their families, & in them I see America.
I have seen the science students unlocking the mysteries of life late at night in university laboratories for little or no pay, & in them I see America.
I have seen the families struggling with a cancer diagnosis, or dementia in a parent or spouse. Amid the struggles of mortality & dignity, in them I see America.
These, & so many other Americans, have every bit as much claim to a government working for them as the lobbyists & moneyed classes. And yet, the power brokers in Washington today seem deaf to these voices. It is a national disgrace of historic proportions.
And finally, what is so wrong about those who must worry about the cost of a drink with friends, or a date, or a little entertainment, to rephrase Senator Grassley's demeaning phrasings? Those who can't afford not to worry about food, shelter, healthcare, education for their children, & all the other costs of modern life, surely they too deserve to be able to spend some of their “darn pennies” on the simple joys of life.
Never mind that almost every reputable economist has called this tax bill a sham of handouts for the rich at the expense of the vast majority of Americans & the future economic health of this nation. Never mind that it is filled with loopholes written by lobbyists. Never mind that the wealthiest already speak with the loudest voices in Washington, & always have. Grassley’s comments open a window to the soul of the current national Republican Party & it it is not pretty. This is not a view of America that I think President Ronald Reagan let alone President Dwight Eisenhower or Teddy Roosevelt would have recognized. This is unadulterated cynicism & a version of top-down class warfare run amok. ~ Dan RatherFacebook 12/4/17 ~ Dan Rather,

IN CHAPTERS [7/7]



   2 Poetry
   2 Fiction


   3 H P Lovecraft
   2 Jorge Luis Borges


   3 Lovecraft - Poems
   2 Labyrinths


1f.lovecraft - The Dunwich Horror, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   not civilly refrain from telling the Librarianthe same erudite Henry
   Armitage (A.M. Miskatonic, Ph. D. Princeton, Litt. D. Johns Hopkins)
  --
   He stopped as he saw firm denial on the Librarians face, and his own
   goatish features grew crafty. Armitage, half-ready to tell him he might

1f.lovecraft - The Shadow over Innsmouth, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   the Librarian gave me a note of introduction to the curator of the
   Society, a Miss Anna Tilton, who lived nearby, and after a brief

1.hs - The Essence of Grace, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
   English version by Thomas Rain Crowe Original Language Persian/Farsi Now that I have raised the glass of pure wine to my lips, The nightingale starts to sing! Go to the Librarian and ask for the book of this bird's songs, and Then go out into the desert. Do you really need college to read this book? Break all your ties with people who profess to teach, and learn from the Pure Bird. From Pole to Pole the news of those sitting in quiet solitude is spreading. On the front page of the newspaper, the alcoholic Chancellor of the University Said: "Wine is illegal. It's even worse than living off charity." It's not important whether we drink Gallo or Mouton Cadet: drink up! And be happy, for whatever our Winebringer brings is the essence of grace. The stories of the greed and fantasies of all the so-called "wise ones" Remind me of the mat-weavers who tell tourists that each strand is a yarn of gold. Hafiz says: The town's forger of false coins is also president of the city bank. So keep quiet, and hoard life's subtleties. A good wine is kept for drinking, never sold. [1512.jpg] -- from Drunk on the Wine of the Beloved: 100 Poems of Hafiz, by Thomas Rain Crowe <
1.lovecraft - Waste Paper- A Poem Of Profound Insignificance, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  In the office of the Librarian of Congress
  America was discovered in 1492

BOOK I. -- PART I. COSMIC EVOLUTION, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D. C."
  http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sd/sd1-0-co.htm (1 von 14) [06.05.2003 03:30:19]
  --
  in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D.C."
  http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sd/sd2-0-co.htm (1 von 12) [06.05.2003 03:30:21]

The Library Of Babel 2, #Labyrinths, #Jorge Luis Borges, #Poetry
  ises, the Librarian deduced that the Library is "total"-perfect, complete,
  and whole-and that its bookshelves contain all possible combinations of
  --
  them-rungs were missing-they speak with the Librarian about galleries
  and staircases, and, once in a while, they take up the nearest book and leaf

The Library of Babel, #Labyrinths, #Jorge Luis Borges, #Poetry
  almost killed them; they talk with the Librarian of galleries and stairs; sometimes
  they pick up the nearest volume and leaf through it, looking for infamous words.

WORDNET














IN WEBGEN [10000/47]

Wikipedia - Anastasius the Librarian
Wikipedia - List of The Librarian characters -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of The Librarians episodes -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - The Librarians (2007 TV series) -- Television series
Wikipedia - The Librarians (film) -- 2001 film
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/111000.The_Librarian_of_Basra
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/111006.The_Librarian
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22065877-the-librarian-and-the-wolf
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23203583-the-librarian-principle
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25747213-the-librarian
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27389987-the-librarians-and-the-lost-lamp
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27706544-the-librarian
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31383930-the-librarian-and-the-spy
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34415420-the-librarian
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34910182-the-librarian-and-the-spy
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35442771-the-librarian
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35678716-the-librarians-and-the-pot-of-gold
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36383125-the-librarian
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38336890-the-librarian-s-vampire-assistant
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38336890.The_Librarian_s_Vampire_Assistant__The_Librarian_s_Vampire_Assistant___1_
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39973.Here_Lies_the_Librarian
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7463932-what-the-librarian-did
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8300749-rescuing-the-librarian
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Librarian:_Curse_of_the_Judas_Chalice
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Librarians
The Librarian: Quest for the Spear(2004) - When a magical artifact is lifted from his library, a meek librarian sets out to ensure its safe return.
The Librarian III: The Curse of the Judas Chalice (2008) ::: 6.5/10 -- The Librarian: The Curse of the Judas Chalice (original title) -- The Librarian III: The Curse of the Judas Chalice Poster -- Losing his girlfriend because he was at an auction dramatically getting the magical philosopher's stone instead of a date, he needs a vacation - New Orleans but finds himself busy saving Earth from the curse of the Judas chalice/vampires. Director: Jonathan Frakes
The Librarians ::: TV-14 | 42min | Action, Adventure, Comedy | TV Series (20132018) -- A group of librarians sets off on adventures in an effort to save mysterious, ancient artifacts. Creator: John Rogers
https://courage.fandom.com/wiki/Wrath_of_the_Librarian
https://matrix.fandom.com/wiki/The_Librarian
https://thelibrarians.fandom.com/wiki/The_Librarian:_Quest_for_the_Spear
https://thelibrarians.fandom.com/wiki/The_Librarian:_Return_to_King_Solomon's_Mines
https://thelibrarians.fandom.com/wiki/The_Librarians
https://thelibrarians.fandom.com/wiki/The_Librarian:_The_Curse_of_the_Judas_Chalice
https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Adversaries_of_the_Righteous_part_2:_The_Broker_and_Ifraja_the_Librarian
Conan the Librarian
List of The Librarian characters
List of The Librarians episodes
Mythology of The Librarian
The Librarian
The Librarian: Curse of the Judas Chalice
The Librarian (franchise)
The Librarian: Quest for the Spear
The Librarian: Return to King Solomon's Mines
The Librarians
The Librarians (2007 TV series)
The Librarians (2014 TV series)



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