“You must live feverishly in a library. Colleges are not going to do any good unless you are raised and live in a library everyday of your life.”

“Live in the library, for Christ’s sake! Don’t live on your goddamn computers and the internet and all that crap. Go to the library!”

“There's no use going to school unless your final destination is the library.”

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

“This is incredible. This is quite amazing because who you're honoring tonight is not only myself but the ghost of a lot of your favorite writers. And I wouldn't be here except that they spoke to me in the library. The library's been the center of my life. I never made it to college. I started going to the library when I graduated from high school. I went to the library every day for three or four days a week for 10 years and I graduated from the library when I was 28.”

“I don't believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.”

“Libraries raised me.”