Tag Archives: literacy
Open arms
“A library should be like a pair of open arms.” ― Roger Rosenblatt “So why on earth would you take an eight-month-old baby to a library?” my mother asked me, when I told her how Matt and I had spent the previous day with Grady. As a retired librarian who specialized in youth services, I …
The beautiful stillness
“Reading was my escape and my comfort, my consolation, my stimulant of choice: reading for the pure pleasure of it, for the beautiful stillness that surrounds you when you hear an author’s words reverberating in your head.” ― Paul Auster Even when life is the craziest and most chaotic, I always read myself to sleep …
If you look
“If you look at an illuminated manuscript, even today, it just blows your mind. For them, without all the clutter and inputs that we have, it must have been even more extraordinary.” — Geraldine Brooks I started reading aloud to our sons when they were babies, and kept it up nightly until they were in …
What really knocks me out
“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.” — J. D. Salinger Who comes to mind when you read this quote? …
A garden and a library
“He who has a garden and a library wants for nothing.” — Marcus Tullius Cicero Several weeks ago one of our readers sent me this quote, and I immediately thought “That would make a great post for the blog.” What makes the quote so appealing is that most people can have at least a small library and …
But then you read
“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.” — James Baldwin Although …
A delightful society
“Books are delightful society. If you go into a room and find it full of books – even without taking them from the shelves they seem to speak to you, to bid you welcome.” ― William Ewart Gladstone From the most magnificent libraries to the humblest bookshelves, I feel at home wherever there are books. …
The books themselves
“I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them–with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself.” — Eudora Welty I can think of few sorrows for which …
Defeat Despair 