Libraries

 

"If I'd wanted to be a librarian, I'd have been a librarian. I'd have gone to library school, taken library exams and saved up enough library stamps to buy a library uniform. Whatever they do, I'd have done it: by the book. And of all the librarians in the near vicinity, I'd have been far and away the librarianest; the kind of librarian other librarians sing songs about, gathered around their library fires." - Mick Herron

 "Did it ever occur to anyone that if you put nice libraries in public schools you wouldn't have to put them in prisons?" -Fran Lebowitz

 "Catalogers are the rebar of library construction." - Sylvia Tag

"A library is essentially a place of possibility." - A.J. Hackwith

“I have a good job in the prison library, looking after the book.” -Jesse Eisenberg

“The perfect day: riding a bike to the library.” - Peter Golkin

"Nothing sickens me more than the closed door of a library." -Barbara Tuchman

"Only librarians like to search; everyone else likes to find." -Roy Tennant

"If the Smithsonian is the nation's attic, the (National) Archives is the nation's sock drawer." -Linton Weeks

"Historically, terrorists and spies have used libraries to plan and carry out activities that threaten our national security." -Department of Justice

"No offense to the American Library Association, but we just don't care." -Attorney General John Ashcroft, stating that the FBI is not interested in  searching library records.

"We must conceive of the library as a channel through which books pass on their way from the publisher to the incinerator." -G. Hardin

"If a man spends enough time in a library, he may actually change his mind. I have seen it happen." -Roger Rosenblatt

"Our whole American way of life is a great war of ideas, and librarians are the arms dealers selling weapons to both sides." - James Quinn

"I'm a frustrated librarian. Instead of a banjo picker or a riverboat pilot I'd like to be a man who sits behind a counter and says: 'shhh!'." -John Hartford

"(Librarians have) got their radical factions, like the Ruby Ridge or Waco types." -Judith Platt, spokesperson for the Association of American Publishers, 2001

"In 1988 the United States spent 15 billion dollars on horses and 6.4 billion dollars on libraries." -Library of Congress Information Bulletin #61592