Quotes from Susan Orlean

one more piece of the bigger puzzle the library is always seeking to assemble—the looping, unending story of who we are.

In truth, a library is as much a portal as it is a place.

grew up in libraries

Szabo frequently preaches the gospel of the library as the people's university.

checkout machine

Talking to him was like engaging in a fistfight with someone gazing at himself in a mirror while punching you.

Why would an old couple in San Francisco give to the Los Angeles Library to save the books?" one note read. "Well, [my] father collapsed and died in the LA Public Library on July 17, 1952. Heart Attack or stroke. I never found out which. Good luck with your campaign.

We are all whispering in a tin can on a string, but we are heard, so we whisper the message into the next tin can and the next string. Writing a book, just like building a library, is a sheer act of sheer defiance. It is a declaration that you believe in the persistence of memory.

Beyond that was all uncertainty, the way life almost always is. It would remain a story without end, like a suspended chord in the last measure of a song—that singular, dissonant, open sound that makes you ache to hear something more.

Libraries saw the Internet coming and extended a hand. First they set up computer stations for public use; then they offered free Wi-Fi. Now at Central Library and many other libraries around the country, there are kiosks where anyone can borrow a laptop or tablet computer to use for the day, just the way she might borrow a book.

The publicness of the public library is an increasingly rare commodity. It becomes harder all the time to think of places that welcome everyone and don't charge any money for that warm embrace. The commitment to inclusion is so powerful that many decisions about the library hinge on whether or not a particular choice would cause a subset of the public to feel uninvited

The fire in the library was colorless. You could look right through it, as if it were a sheet of glass. Where the flame had any color, it was pale blue. It was so hot that it appeared icy. Hamel said he felt like he was standing inside a blacksmith's forge.

within three years of its founding, OverDrive had loaned one million books, and in 2012, it had reached a hundred million checkouts. By the end of 2017, it had reached the milestone of having loaned one billion books. On an average day, seven hundred thousand books are checked out through OverDrive. The company has been so successful that, a few years ago, the Japanese conglomerate Rakuten paid $410 million to acquire it.

Interest in having a library in town persevered, and in 1872, an association formed to establish a library in the city. To raise money, the association sponsored a "Dickens Party," which partygoers attended dressed as their favorite Charles Dickens character. The party lasted for a full week. Hints to Horse-keepers and On the Sheep Industry were purchased with proceeds of the party.

Connor said when they entered the building immediately after the fire, they felt like they'd died and gone to see if Dante knew what he was writing about.

He hovered between what he didn't want anymore and what he wasn't very likely to have.

Connor-Dominguez said when they entered the building immediately after the fire, they felt like they'd died and gone to see if Dante knew what he was writing about.

This building was full of what it was missing. It was if the people who passed thorough had left a small indent in the air.

The library is an easy place to be when you have no place you need to go and a desire to be invisible.

Taking books away from a culture is to take away its shared memory. It's like taking away the ability to remember your dreams. Destroying a culture's books is sentencing it to something wose than death: It is sentencing it to seem as if it never lived.

He tugged at his hair more, and then added, "He knew Burt Reynolds and what's-her-name that he married. Debra, what's that name?" "Loni Anderson, Daddy," Debra said. She turned to me. "Harry knew them really well. He knew everything about them. He told me that Burt Reynolds and Loni Anderson would get divorced way before anyone else knew.

bookshelves-full-of-books family.

Sometimes I think I've figured out some order in the universe, but then I find myself in Florida, swamped by incongruity and paradox, and I have to start all over again.

idea of being forgotten is terrifying. I fear not just that I, personally, will be forgotten, but that we are all doomed to being forgotten—that the sum of life is ultimately nothing; that we experience