“Librarians are serious people, seldomgiven to idle jocularity. The reason for this, I believe, is because we are overwhelmed by the enormous number of good books waiting to be read, leaving little time for frivolity. My personal list of must-read books presents a daunting challenge; I can't even imagine the pressure our head librarian must be under.”

“The more I know about God, I am convinced He likes to read books and authors are His librarians. Every soul is a story waiting to be read.”

“There are no books in this world that everybody must read, but only books that a person must read at a certain time in a given place under given circumstances and at a given period of his life.”

“People can read books and watch children at the same time . . . Of course, both the reading of the books and the watching of the children will be performed in a way best described as half-assed. If you want to read your book in a non-half-assed way, you have to wait until your child is in kindergarten, or you must pay someone to watch your child while you read your book. Even then, however, you must not read the book in your home because the child will find you and jump on you and make reading impossible. You must leave your home, leave your yard, leave your street. You must drive to a cafe in town to read your book. You must run and hide from your child as if your child is serving you a subpoena. This is not insane. It does not make you bad if you do this.”

“As a child, my number one best friend was the librarian in my grade school. I actually believed all those books belonged to her.”

“Librarians lend people books from the library. The best librarians are children's book librarians.”