"Guards!Guards!"
"he had allowed his daughters to use his library without restraint and
nothing is more fatal to maidenly delicacy of speech than the run of a
good
library" TEMPEST TOST Robertson Davies
"Perhaps the two most valuable and satisfactory products of American
civilization are the librarian on the one hand and the cocktail in the
other." -- Louis Stanley Jast
"I thought I'd be a librarian until I met some crazy ones." Edward Gorey
(Boston Globe article, 1998, as quoted in Salon)
"Everything is held together with stories. That is all that is holding
us together, stories and compassion."
- Barry Lopez, from an interview in _Poets & Writers_ Mar/Apr. 1994
first encountered as the epigraph to Charles de Lint's lovely novel
about stories, _Someplace to be Flying_)
"I'd best head to the library. Research beckons" -- Rupert Giles
"Librarians, Dusty, possess a vast store of politeness. These are people
who get asked regularly the dumbest questions on God's green earth.
These people tolerate every kind of crank and eccentric and
mouth-breather there is" --Garrison Keillor, _Lives of the Cowboys_
Willow: Gee, maybe we should help Giles. He might be in danger.
Xander: Nah, he's like Super Librarian. People forget, Willow, that
knowledge is the ultimate weapon.
_Buffy the Vampire Slayer_
"To look around at a roomful of readers, each bent over a book, was to
realize that this posture is among the most beautiful of
human transfigurations." Editorial, NEW YORK TIMES, 11/16/98 ~
"The answers are there; you just have to know where to look." -- Dana
Scully
"I imagine heaven's like this," I said. "Perfect surroundings, and
angels wafting in with tea." Miss Read/Farther Afield
"I read because one life isn't enough, and in the pages of a book, I can
be anybody.
I read because the words that build the story become mine, to build my
life.
I read not for happy endings, but for new beginnings; I'm just beginning
myself, and I wouldn't mind a map.
I read because I have friends who don't and young though they are,
they're beginning to run out of material.
I read because every journey begins at the library, and it's time for me
to start packing.
I read because one of these days I'm going to get out of this town, and
I'm going to go everywhere and meet everybody - and I want to be ready."
Richard Peck in the voice of a child
"A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence
stops." ~~ Henry B. Adams
Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together
and motivating them, the teacher is the most important." --Bill Gates
"The English language has the worst system of spelling of any major
language. Since English spelling is so hard, it is used as a test, a
rather unfair test, of a person's carefulness and literacy. Check every
word that
looks phunny." - Robert C. Pinckert, Pinckert's Practical Grammar
(Writer's Digest Books, 1986), pages 220-23.
"The closest thing you will find to an orderly universe is a good
library"
"A library should be like a pair of open arms" Roger Rosenblatt
"Librarian is a service occupation, gas station attendant of the mind.
In an earlier age, I might have made things. Now I only make them
available." Richard Powers *The Gold Bug Variations*
"He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the
dictionary." -William Faulkner (about Ernest
Hemingway)
"Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?"
-Ernest Hemingway (about William
Faulkner)
"Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time
reading it." -Moses Hadas
"The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,
And all the sweet serenity of
- Longfellow
Libraries, places of buzzz, not shhhhhh...!
I believe that the only lastingly important form of writing is writing
for children. It is writing that is carried in the reader's
heart for a lifetime; it is writing that speaks to the future. Sonya
Hartnett
"I must judge for myself, but how can I judge, how can any man judge,
unless his mind has been opened and enlarged by reading?"- John Adams
In literature as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by
others.--Andre Maurois
Books invite all; they constrain none.--Inscription at the Los Angeles
Public Library
Some of us are story makers, others are story sharers. One way or
another we provide stories for kids that will entertain, move, engage,
and teach, stories that say again and again that yes, life may be hard,
or funny, or perplexing, always risky, but in the end
--worth the living. Avi in his 2003 acceptance speech for the
Newbery Medal
"What a school thinks about its library is a measure of what it feels
about education." -Harold Howe, former Commissioner of Education
"The Librarian, whose job is to heal ignorance, to keep life safe for
poetry and to put knowledge smack dab in the middle of the American
way."
"I may not be an explorer, or an adventurer, or a treasure-seeker, or a
gunfighter, Mr. O'Connell, but I am proud of what I am...I, am a
librarian!" The Mummy
"If we didn't have libraries, many people thirsty for knowledge would
dehydrate." (Megan Jo Tetrick, age 12, Daleville, Indiana)
The Vigo County Public Library is "easy to find. It's the million-story
building at Seventh and Poplar streets." (Lori Henson in her
"Briefcases" column, Terre Haute Tribune-Star, 10/8/02)
There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the Free
Public Library, this republic of letters, where neither rank, office,
nor wealth receives the slightest consideration. ~~Andrew Carnegie
The library is cool! Anonymous
The Public Library feels more "public" to me than anywhere else I can
think of. The diversity of patrons is amazing, and all of them seem to
be thrilled to have the library as a community resource. ~~David
We must not think of learning as only what happens in schools. It is an
extended part of life. The most readily available resource for all of
life is our public library system. ~~David McCullough
What is more important in a library than anything else than everything
else is the fact that it exists. ~~Archibald MacLeish
Librarians are at the heart of opposition to foolish, dangerous,
misguided attempts at censoring human expression in our free country. I
thank God for their efforts. ~~Clyde Edgerton
Getting my library card was like citizenship; it was like American
citizenship. ~~Oprah Winfrey
What in the world would we do without our libraries? ~~Katharine Hepburn
My childhood library was small enough not to be intimidating. And yet I
felt the whole world was contained in those two rooms. I could walk any
aisle and smell wisdom. ~~Rita Dove
The library is an arena of possibility, opening both a window into the
soul and a door onto the world. ~~Rita Dove
You, as librarians, stand at the door beyond which this infinity resides
As the 19th century French writer Victor Hugo said: "A library implies
an act of faith." You are the keepers of that faith. ~~Rita Dove
The richest person in the world. In fact all the riches in the world
couldn't provide you with anything like the endless, incredible loot
available at your local library. You can measure the awareness, the
breadth and the wisdom of a civilization, a nation, a people, by the
priority given to preserving these repositories of all that we are, all
that we were, or will be. ~~Malcolm Forbes
Patricia Hamilton
Ritchie Elementary
New Baltimore, VA
phamilton@fcps1.org
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