Quotations About Libraries
& Librarism
"A giant brain is basically a giant nerd, and where
would a giant nerd be? ... The library!"
 (Futurama,
"The Day the Earth Stood Stupid" episode, 2001.
Line spoken by the
character of Fry.)
"A library is not a community masturbation center."
Blaise Cronin
(Library Journal
column, 15 November 2002, p.46)
"A Library that is not accessible out of business
hours is of as little value as gold horded in a vault and withdrawn
from circulation."
Alexander Graham
Bell
(letter to Mabel
Hubbard Bell, 17 November 1896)
"A new library is like finding a $100 bill on the sidewalk."
Anonymous library patron
(As quoted in PUBLIB message, 11 September 2000)
"A perverse mind presides over the holy defense of the
library."
Umberto Eco
(The Name of the
Rose. HBJ, 1983, p. 176)
"A.J. is a genius. You'll never be able to
out-library him."
(Fairly OddParents episode. Line
spoken by the character of Wanda)
"Away with lamentation! Away with elegies and
dirges! Away with biographies and histories, and libraries and
museums! Let the dead be the dead."
Henry Miller
(Above quotation
submitted by Raymond Wheeldon)
"Blaming the library for exposure to pornography is like
blaming the lake if your child walks up to it alone, falls in and
then drowns."
David Sawyer
(Spokane Spokesman-Review column, 18 December 2000)
"Doing research on the Web is like using a library assembled piecemeal by
pack rats and vandalized nightly."
Roger Ebert
(Yahoo! Internet Life
column, Sept. 1998, p. 66)
"Don't be afraid to cherish it
Look it up in the bookmobile."
Guided By Voices
("Man Called Aerodynamics")
"Don't you know that those old musty books, as you
call them, are the only things worth anything in all this library?
All the rest is trash."
Saxe Holm,
"Mrs. Millington and Her Librarian. A Love Story"
(Harper's New Monthly
Magazine, June 1881, p. 109)
"For him that stealeth a book from this library, let it change into a
serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck by palsy & all his
members blasted. Let him languish in pain, crying aloud for mercy, & let
there be no surcease for his agony until he sink to dissolution. Let bookworms
gnaw his entrails in token of the worm that dieth not, & when at last he
goeth to his final punishment let the flames of hell consume him for ever &
aye."
Attributed to the monastery of San Pedro, Barcelona
(unable to identify published source)
"He
had been so busy getting away from the library, he hadn't paid
attention to where he was going."
J.K. Rowling
(Harry Potter and
the Sorcerer's Stone. Scholastic, 1997, p 206)
"I accept the risk of damnation. The Lord will absolve
me, because He knows I acted for His glory. My duty was to protect
the library."
Umberto Eco
(The Name of the
Rose. HBJ, 1983, p. 471)
"I always dreamed you'd be my library buddy."
(The Simpsons episode. Line spoken by the character of Lisa
Simpson)
"I assumed he could not resist the temptation to
penetrate the library and look at the books."
(The Name of the
Rose. Directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud, 1986.
Line spoken by Dwight
Weist as voice of old Adson.)
"I did it! And it's all thanks to the books at my
local library."
(Futurama,
"The Day the Earth Stood Stupid" episode, 2001.
Line spoken by the
character of Fry.)
"I did most of my learning in the library, where I
could go at my own pace. I learned that I really could be a
scientist and that I could take risks that other students couldn't
because nobody had any expectations of me."
John
"Jack" Horner, paleontologist
(Chicago Tribune
article, 23 January 2003)
Frank Gehry,
architect
(As quoted by a
library director, Chicago Tribune
article, 20 August 2004)
"I really didn't realize the librarians were, you
know, such a dangerous group. ... You think they're just sitting at
the desk, all quiet and everything. They're like plotting the
revolution, man. I wouldn't mess with them. You know, they've had
their budgets cut. They're paid nothing. Books are falling apart.
The libraries are just like the ass end of everything, right?"
Michael Moore
(BuzzFlash interview,
13 March 2002)
"I saw you guys going at it behind the card catalog."
(Friends
episode, 22 November 2001.
Line spoken by
Jennifer Anniston as Rachel Green)
"I was born on a shelf in the rare books library."
Janis Ian
("Belle of the Blues" -- Submitted by
Marylaine Block)
"I'd like to be in charge of a library, or be an
archeologist. Again, it's research, a bit of detective work -- the
things I really love to do."
Bill Wyman
(Publishers Weekly
interview, 9 September 2002, p. 53)
"I'm telling you, dude, America's a rad place to live. The only
thing that holds you back here is yourself. There's fucking public
libraries! Do you know what I'm saying? There's free education!"
Frank Kozik
(Punk Planet interview, November/December 1999, reprinted in
We Owe You Nothing:
Punk Planet: The Collected Interviews, p. 178)
"If you didn't want them to think, you shouldn't have given them library
cards."
Robert Kaufman
(Getting Straight, dir. Richard Rush, 1970. Line spoken by
Elliott Gould as Harry
Bailey)
"If you want to get laid, go to college, but if you want an education, go
to the library."
Frank Zappa
(Submitted by M.A. of Texas)
"It's a beautiful exercise in the fallibility of leaky memories
and why you want to build a library to last 10,000 years."
Paul Baran
(Wired interview, March 2001, p. 144)
"It's called freedom of choice, and it's one of the
principles this country was founded upon. Look it up in the library,
Reverend, if you have any of them left when you've finished burning
all the books."
George Carlin
(Submitted by Trey)
"It's one thing to be in a bookstore. But to see
your book in a library, to me that really means something."
David Sedaris
(Public Libraries
interview)
"'Let's try the library,' I tell him. 'We can find out anything
here!'"
David McPhail
(Lost. Scholastic, 1990, p. 23)
"Libraries are far from the rarefied cathedrals of
secular humanism they pretend to be, while librarians are the
shadiest creatures this side of the Russian mob. Scratch the
adamantly bland demeanor of any librarian and you'll find trails of
broken hearts, bathtubs full of meth fixings, and covert careers in
porn."
David Schmader
(The Stranger.com
column, 17 October 2002)
Greeley, TX
resident John Bookman
(As quoted in Denver
Post article, 17 December 2003)
"Libaries is fun! They gots lots of tables to crawl
under."
(Rugrats episode. Line
spoken by the character of Lil DeVille)
"Librarians are librarians: they are not caregivers,
nurturers, social workers, surrogate parents, welfare agents, or
therapists. When all is said and done, their role is
straightforward: they gather stuff, impose some order on said stuff,
and make the stuff available to the public."
Blaise Cronin
(Library Journal
column, 15 May 2002, p. 66)
"Libraries are brothels for the mind. Which means
that librarians are the madams, greeting punters, understanding
their strange tastes and needs, and pimping their books."
Guy Browning
(The Guardian column,
18 October 2003. Submitted by Lynette in Queensland)
"Libraries are your friends."
Neil Gaiman
(submitted by Trey Bunn)
"Like missile defense, leading-edge library automation is a money
pit."
Nicholson Baker
(New Yorker
article, 24 July 2000, p. 42)
Ian McEwan
(Atonement. Talese/Doubleday, 2002, p. 192)
"More people should use their library."
Regis Philbin
(Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, 2 May 2000)
"My grandma always said that God made libraries so that people didn't have
any excuse to be stupid."
Joan Bauer
(Rules of the Road. Putnam, 1997, p. 142. Props to
The U*N*A*B*A*S*H*E*D Librarian)
"Pathetic human race. Arranging their knowledge by
category just made it easier to absorb. Dewey, you fool, your
decimal system has played right into my hands."
(Futurama,
"The Day the Earth Stood Stupid" episode, 2001.
Line spoken by the
character of The Big Brain.)
"Sounds like two people are really enjoying the
Dewey Decimal System."
(Friends episode, "The
One With Ross's Book."
Line spoken by Matthew
Perry as Chandler Bing)
"That's what the library is: a government-funded pathetic
friend. And that's why everyone kind of bullies the library."
Jerry Seinfeld
(Seinfeld episode,
1991)
"The final science is library science."
John Barth
(Submitted by D.C. of Michigan)
"The librarian told us that we were six or seven
years too late. The library had removed all the Zen books from
circulation because nobody checked them out anymore."
Daniel M. Pinkwater
(Young Adults.
Tor, 1985, p. 91)
"The library called. The new documentary on the dung
beetle is in. To the library!"
(Rocket Power episode, 11
October 2001)
"The more I read, the more questions I have. Every time I pass a library I
get an anxiety attack."
(SeaQuest DSV
episode. Props to Linda Absher, author of The Lipstick Librarian)
"This doesn't look like a Library Planet to me."
(No-Frills Book: Science Fiction. Jove, 1981, p. 36)
"We cannot have good libraries until we first have good librarians --
properly educated, professionally recognized, and fairly rewarded."
Herbert S. White
(Library Journal
column, 15 November 1999, pp. 44-45)
"We must conceive of the library as a channel
through which books pass on their way from the publisher to the
incinerator."
G. Hardin, 1947
(As quoted in New
York Times article, 26 October 2002)
"We'll go where the action is
If you don't know what to do
I'll look it up for you."
Sam Phillips
("Faster Pussycat to the
Library!")
"We're trying to keep a library here that doesn't go goofy ... ."
Kevin Starr, State Librarian of California
(Quoted by Nicholson Baker in
New Yorker
article, 24 July 2000, p. 42)
"Well, I'm off to the library to do some recreational reading ."
(Aqua Teen Hunger
Force,
"Dumber Days" episode, 2002.
Line spoken by the
character of Meatwad.)
"Where any nation starts awake
Books are the memory. And it's plain
Decay of libraries is like
Alzheimer's in the nation's brain."
Ted Hughes
("Hear It Again")
"Why, oh, why didn't I stay at the library to
complete my assignments in a responsible and timely manner!!"
Tony Cochran
(Agnes comic
strip, 3 April 2002)
"Yeah, they caught him in the library reading a book. Freak."
(Grounded for Life episode, 24 January 2001, line spoken by
Linsey Bartilson as the character Lily
Finnerty)
"You know the republic will survive when there is new money for
libraries."
Denis Hamill
(New York Daily News column,
3 December 2000)
"You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for $1.50
in late fees at the public library."
Ben Affleck and Matt Damon
(Good Will Hunting)
(Submitted by Jennifer
Richard)
|
home page.
