“If you read fast and read all, maybe some of the sand will stay in the sieve.”

“I’m completely library educated. I’ve never been to college. I went down to the library when I was in grade school in Waukegan, and in high school in Los Angeles, and spent long days every summer in the library. I used to steal magazines from a store on Genesee Street, in Waukegan, and read them and then steal them back on the racks again. That way I took the print off with my eyeballs and stayed honest. I didn’t want to be a permanent thief, and I was very careful to wash my hands before I read them. 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. And it’s far more fun than going to school, simply because you make up your own list and you don’t have to listen to anyone. When I would see some of the books my kids were forced to bring home and read by some of their teachers, and were graded on—well, what if you don’t like those books?”

“Reading is at the center of our lives. The library is our brain. Without the library, you have no civilization.”

“Do you ever read any of the books you burn?"He laughed. "That's against the law!""Oh. Of course.”

“..holding a book but reading the empty spaces.”

“You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”

“These are all novels, all about people that never existed, the people that read them it makes them unhappy with their own lives. Makes them want to live in other ways they can never really be.”