Libraries shape possibility — they welcome every curious heart. As Arthur Ashe reflected: “I have become convinced that we spend too much time on the playing field and too little time in libraries.”

The library, especially the large public library, with its endless supply of books, offered more possibilities than the ideals of philanthropists and administrators. ~ Matthew Battles, Library: An Unquiet History

I read, I say. I study and read. I bet I’ve read everything you’ve read. Don’t think I haven’t. I consume libraries. I wear out spines and ROM‑drives. I do things like get in a taxi and say, “The library, and step on it.” ~ David Foster Wallace

Librarians are the secret masters of the universe. They control information. ~ Spider Robinson

A public library is the most enduring of memorials, the trustiest monument for the presentation of an event or a name or an affection; for it, and it only, is respected by wars and revolutions, and survives them. ~ Mark Twain

If information is the currency of democracy, libraries are its bank. ~ Wendell Ford

Perhaps no place is so totally democratic as the town library. The only entrance requirement is interest. ~ Lady Bird Johnson

What can I say? Librarians rule. ~ Regis Philbin

A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber‑room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse. ~ Barbara Tuchman

My encouragement to you is to go tomorrow to the library. ~ Maya Angelou

I am never long, even in the society of her I love, without yearning for the company of my lamp and my library. ~ Lord Byron

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

But with the library, it’s like catnip, I suppose: you begin to run in circles because there’s so much to look at and read. ~ Ray Bradbury, Paris Review, 2010