“The serious reader in the age of technology is a rebel by definition: a protester without a placard, a Luddite without hammer or bludgeon. She reads on planes to picket the antiseptic nature of modern travel, on commuter trains to insist on individualism in the midst of the herd, in hotel rooms to boycott the circumstances that separate her from her usual sources of comfort and stimulation, during office breaks to escape from the banal conversation of office mates, and at home to revolt against the pervasive and mind-deadening irrelevance of television.”

“The library is not, as some would have it, a place for the retiring of disposition or faint of heart. It is not an ivory tower or a quiet room in a sanitarium facing away from the afternoon sun. It is, rather, a command center, a power base. A board room, a war room. An Oval Office for all who preside over their own destinies. One does not retreat from the world here; one prepares to join it at an advantage.”

“Give a man a hoe and he is something to exploit. Give him a book and he is something to fear.”

“I always love that 'we' part from a staff officer.”

“Do you wish me to continue my demonstration?" "Of what? You ability to control my physical movements or your unwanted attentions?" She returned his glare as she deliberately wiped her hand across her mouth. His eyes narrowed. "I don't recall you protesting too loudly," he snapped.”

“The permanent misfits can find salvation only in a complete separation from the self; and they usually find it by losing themselves in the compact collectivity of a mass movement.”

“Something told her to hide the feeling from Herb. That something, that damned something, was the sense of civilized dignity that is one of our most civilized attributes, the source of so many missed opportunities.”