Alberto Manguel

"I know that something dies when i give up my books, and that my memory keeps going back to them with mournful nostalgia."

"Socrates affirmed that only that which the reader already knows can be sparked by a reading, and that the knowledge cannot be acquired through dead letters."

"Most readers, then and now, have at some time experienced the humiliation of being told that their occupation is reprehensible."

"Something about the possession of a book - an object that can contain infinite fables, words of wisdom, chronicles of times gone by, humorous anecdotes and divine revelation - endows the reader with t…"

"At different times and in different places I have come to expect certain books to look a certain way, and, as in all fashions, these changing features fix a precise quality onto a book's definition. I…"

"In every literate society, learning to read is something of an initiation, a ritualized passage out of a state of dependency and rudimentary communication."

"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 pr…"

"Through ignorance, through faith, through intelligence, through trickery and cunning, through illumination, the reader rewrites the text with the same words of the original but under another heading, …"