The telling of stories creates the real world. Alberto Manguel More Quotes by Alberto Manguel More Quotes From Alberto Manguel But at night, when the library lamps are lit, the outside world disappears and nothing but the space of books remains in existence. Alberto Manguel space night book It hardly matters why a library is destroyed: every banning, curtailment, shredding, plunder or loot gives rise (at least as a ghostly presence) to a louder, clearer, more durable library of the banned, looted, plundered, shredded or curtailed. Alberto Manguel library matter giving Readers, censors know, are defined by the books they read. Alberto Manguel reader knows book In our day, computer technology and the proliferation of books on CD-ROM have not affected - as far as statistics show - the production and sale of books in their old-fashioned codex form. Alberto Manguel cds technology book I enjoyed learning the poems, but I didn't understand of what use they might possibly be. ‘They'll keep you company on the day you have no books to read,' my teacher said. Alberto Manguel use teacher book Unpacking books is a revelatory activity. Alberto Manguel activity unpacking book If the library in the morning suggests an echo of the severe and reasonable wishful order of the world, the library at night seems to rejoice in the world's essential, joyful muddle. Alberto Manguel morning night order We can roam the bloated stacks of the Library of Alexandria, where all imagination and knowledge are assembled; we can recognize in its destruction the warning that all we gather will be lost, but also that much of it can be collected again; we can learn from its splendid ambition that what was one man's experience can become, through the alchemy of words, the experience of all, and how that experience, distilled once again into words, can serve each singular reader for some secret, singular purpose. Alberto Manguel ambition imagination men The listeners who buy books after a reading multiply that reading; the author who realizes that he or she may be writing on a blank page but is at least not speaking to a blank wall may be encouraged by the experience, and write more. Alberto Manguel wall reading book Nothing moves except my eyes and my hand occasionally turning a page, and yet something not exactly defined by the word "text" unfurls, progresses, grows and takes root as I read. But how does this process take place? Alberto Manguel eye roots moving It is in the translation that the innocence lost after the first reading is restored under another guise, since the reader is once again faced with a new text and its attendant mystery. That is the inescapable paradox of translation, and also its wealth. Alberto Manguel innocence reading firsts All these are readers, and their gestures, their craft, the pleasure, the responsibility and the power they derive from reading, are common with mine. I am not alone. Alberto Manguel crafts reading responsibility If the book is second-hand, I leave all its markings intact, the spoor of previous readers, fellow-travellers who have recorded their passage by means of scribbled comments, a name on the fly-leaf, a bus ticket to mark a certain page. Alberto Manguel reading mean book As we read a text in our own language, the text itself becomes a barrier. Alberto Manguel barriers language During the day, the library is a realm of order. Alberto Manguel library realms order For Borges, the core of reality lay in books; reading books, writing books, talking about books. In a visceral way, he was conscious of continuing a dialogue begun thousands of years before and which he believed would never end. Alberto Manguel reading writing book Without Leskov there would be no Bulgakov, no Chekhov, but also no Garca Mrquez and Julio Cortzar. . . . Leskov is the essential storyteller: he does not portray life, he creates it in all its wonder and terror and magic. Alberto Manguel magic essentials doe When literature is discovered, Alberto Manguel joyful revelations literature The world that is a book is devoured bya reader who is a letter in the world's text; thus a circular metaphor is created for the endlessness of reading; We are what we read. Alberto Manguel reading book world Existing libraries, in their very being, seem to question the authority of those in power. Alberto Manguel library authority seems
