Quotes from Phyllis Rose

I wanted to make people aware of libraries as an ecosystem that are threatened in the same way as coral reefs. There's a kind of serendipity that occurs in a library that never happens online. Browsing a stack is a unique experience: that feeling of being attracted by a book, by its cover or typography. What makes me melancholy is the thought of books disappearing from libraries.

The banal advice of writ in teachers is "write what you know," but the truth is, you don't know a place until you write it. "Write what you want to know" is more like it.

Every reading is a misreading.

Some kinds of literature demand to be treated respectfully. The obligation is on the reader to live up to them and not so much on them to entertain the reader.

These aren't accidents. They are significant choices, like the choice of a totemic animal: something in your spirit aligns with theirs.

Libraries make strange bedfellows

One of lifes graces and blessings. The only journey is the one within. Model marriage of equals Household Harmony Household & family management The ideals of peace & harmony (In cases of divorce or seperation, the children more commonly lived with the father)

Changes in consciousness begin with art and take shape through discussion of art. But the process takes a long time and involves a lot of people working in many small ways.

The writer… begins in confusion and nothingness and writes his way into clarity.

Perhaps that is what love is: the momentary or prolonged refusal to think of another person in terms of power.

Reading is almost always subversive. From the time you read the next night's fairy tale under the covers by flashlight when you have already had your bedtime story from Daddy and are supposed to be asleep to the time you are an adult reading junk, hoping no one catches you at it, reading is private; that's the most seductive thing about it. It's you and the book.

Writing is… a descent into the self.

Most people should visit Antarctica, metaphorically speaking, on their own. That is one of the conclusions I have reached, one of my recommendations: explore something, even if it's just a bookshelf.

an autobiography held out the promise of hearing truths that only friends confess to one another but are knowledge you need to live.

biographies are a little like marriages: You only have room in your life for one or two.

the challenge of nonfiction is to marry art and truth.

The literature of women's lives is a tradition of escapees, women who have lived to tell the tale.

Perhaps that is what love is: the momentary or prolonged refusal to think of another person in terms of power