Librarians Quotes

Librarians and romance writers accomplish one mission better than anyone, including English teachers: we create readers for life - and what could be more fulfilling than that? ~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

We don't have to destroy the library of the past. We just need to give it a face-lift. ~ Scott Douglas

To librarians, booksellers, and collectors there is nothing limited in the subject of books about books. ~ Leona Rostenberg

The bibliographer in the digital age returns to the revelatory practice of her medieval forebears. Librarians, like those scribes of the Middle Ages, do not merely keep and classify texts; they create them, in the form of online finding aids, CD-ROM concordances, and other electronic texts, not to mention paper study guides and published bibliographies. ~ Matthew Battles

No 'jump into a book' wasnt meant literally, and Yes, you are now banned from the Ferndale library. ~ Librarians For Social Change

The world is full of disappointment," I said.
"Yes," she said, "I heard him say that. And every creature is simply trying to get what it wants, and to make their way through a difficult world. Do you believe that?"
"No," I said. "There's more than that."
"Like what?"
"Like good books," I said, "and good people. And good librarians, who are almost both at once. ~ Lemony Snicket

Now, there is a wonderful thing in this world called "foresight". It is a gift treasured above all others because it allows one to know what the future holds. Most people with foresight end up wielding immense power in life, often becoming great rulers or librarians. ~ Jonathan Auxier

And to love such a librarian requires a surrendering to her eccentricities, a bowing to her pathological quietness, an obeisance to a reticence that is utterly untreatable. If you cannot commit to this sort of dedication, then let her be. Let her wander in wonder among her books and live out her days in her own world without you. ~ Jesse Giles Christiansen

Impersonating a quiet, gentle librarian like Barbara Gordon
You deserve to be taken out of circulation! ~ Karl Kesel

My ultimate authority would be the school librarian Mrs. Greenbacher. ~ Shawn Stewart Ruff

I know that there's a customary cliche about librarians being what crass people might call "hard-asses". ~ Leah Thomas

It was Chaos on Glitter Ice. A massacre of librarians. ~ Rachel Cohn

What is more important in a library than anything else - than everything else - is the fact that it exists. ~ Archibald MacLeish

No librarians yet at their post, the ranks of desks miserably empty, like sockets from which teeth had been pulled. ~ Sarah Perry

Irene didn't dignify his question with an answer. Besides, he'd learn better. A Librarian's mission to seek out books for the Library developed, after a few years, into an urge to find out everything that was going on around one. It wasn't even a personal curiosity. It was a simple, impersonal, uncontrollable need to know. One came to terms with it. She lifted off the Canopic jar's stylized jackal-head lid. 'There's something in here,' she reported. ~ Genevieve Cogman

You don't have to become an investment banker as a way of demonstrating that education has worked for you. But librarians have to believe in the values of high culture. Not just high culture but middle culture, low culture, kinds of exciting eye-catching crap of all kinds. Everyone needs that. ~ Francis Spufford

I'm a librarian in town,' she began.
'You sure about that?'
The words popped out before he could stop them.
Annabelle raised her eyebrows. 'Fairly. It's my job and so far no one has told me to go away when I show up for work.'
smooth, Stryker, he thought, very smooth.
'I was expecting someone wearing glasses. You know. Because librarians read a lot.'
The raised eyebrows turned into a frown. 'You need to get out of the barn more. ~ Susan Mallery

So, when people try to give you some book with a shiny round award on the cover, be kind and gracious, but tell them you don't read "fantasy," because you prefer stories that are real. Then come back here and continue your research on the cult of evil Librarians who secretly rule the world. ~ Brandon Sanderson

Don't fuck with librarians, young lady. We know the power of words. ~ Jay Kristoff

Somhow those Ten Men
at the time they were called Recruiters, of course
discovered that Constance had been at the library. Most likely one of their informants saw her come out, because it was on that very day that the brutes showed up and threatened the librarians. Who told them nothing, incidentally.'
'The same thing happened in Holland,' Kate reflected. 'You'd think these guys would learn their lesson
librarians know how to keep quiet.'
'It helps to ask politely,' said Mr. Benedict ~ Trenton Lee Stewart

For one crazy moment he had the notion of a vanished tribe of librarians, lost in the deep underground caverns of the Bodleian, a wild and savage tribe that fed on unwary travellers. ~ Lavie Tidhar

An ebook is like having a photo of a dead loved one. It's convenient to look at and it will stir the mind, but it doesn't breathe. ~ Brandt Legg

Librarians ... have been my lifelong friends, guides and heroes. ~ Joseph Bruchac

They open up the world. Because knowledge is useless if you don't know how to find it, if you don't even know where to begin to look. - on librarians ~ Patrick Ness

I was diagnosed a thirteen. Paranoid got tacked on about a year later, after I verbally attacked a librarian for trying to hand me propaganda pamphlets for an underground communist force operating out of the basement of the public library. (She'd always been a very suspect type of librarian--I refuse to believe donning rubber gloves to handle books is a normal and accepted practice, and I don't care what anyone says.) ~ Francesca Zappia

Information is valuable. Librarians and libraries are, at best incidental; at worst, in the way. ~ Donald A. Barclay

The woman was putting her purse in the drawer and settling down behind the desk, and I realized I had never seen her before in my life. Her face was as wrinkled as one of those forgotten apples you sometimes find in the pocket of last year's winter jacket.
Yes? she said, peering over her spectacles. They teach them to do that at the Royal Academy of Library Science. ~ Alan Bradley

If she can't spell, why is she a librarian? Librarians should know how to spell. ~ Beverly Cleary

I like to imagine that library school was started because of some sort of silly bar bet where a guy got really plastered and told his buddy that he could convince people that librarians needed to be trained in the art of librarianship. Sadly, this is not the case; its roots are a bit more academic. ~ Scott Douglas

Poor little librarians of the world, those girls, secretly lovely, their looks marred forever by the cruelty of a pair of big dark eyeglasses! ~ Michael Chabon

No duelling. No summoning of imps or other manifestations of elements potentially damaging to the records, including but not limited to: elementals, imps, sprites, ifrits, goblins, vile maidens, elohim, and major, minor and inferior spawn. No praying. No cursing, except by staff. The library is closed on public holidays. Donations welcome."
-Demonia Library ~ Justina Robson

One of those librarians who rules the stacks with an intimidating scowl, whispers quiet sharply enough to lacerate the tender inner tissues of the ear, and will pursue an overdue-book fine with the ferocity of a rabid ferret. ~ Dean Koontz

Librarians know books, we live books, we breathe books, we are books. ~ Jenny Levine

Librarians understand about power - they know how to find anything. ~ Joan Bauer

A library was nothing without its people. You say library and there's this iconoclastic image of an old-lady librarian telling people to be quiet and not to run. But the thing was, that lady - that iconoclastic lady - was with us when we cleaned. She wore blue jeans, too. Maybe she was what people thought about when you said library, but she didn't make the library. People made the library. That's what made a library. Without them, all the sacredness was gone. It was just a building with books. ~ Scott Douglas

Wouldn't it be good if we could let teachers do what they do best - teach. Not judge each child on a series of standardized exams. Let schools embrace, not exclude, those like me with a different way of thinking.
Stop praising literacy with one hand and closing libraries with the other. Let librarians be free to do what they do best: encourage a lifelong love of reading in every child, even the ones without a hope of ever getting an A star. ~ Sally Gardner

Librarians seemed to have a sixth sense for noticing when students were doing things they weren't supposed to. ~ Brandon Sanderson

All the women in my life have been librarians, English teachers and book sellers. ~ Ray Bradbury

I have always had a special affinity for libraries and librarians, for the most obvious reasons. I love books. (One of my first Jobs was shelving books at a branch of the Chicago Public Library.) Libraries are a pillar of any society. I believe our lack of attention to funding and caring for them properly in the United States has a direct bearing on problems of literacy, productivity, and our inability to compete in today's world. Libraries are everyman's free university. ~ John Jakes

I love librarians. They always make me feel like the world's gonna be AOK. ~ Danah Boyd

Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future. Just ask Ray Bradbury. ~ Kami Garcia

What I tend to get from America is very enthusiastic letters and e-mail from librarians and schoolteachers, the gatekeepers, though I hesitate to use that word. I've never been a huge seller. ~ Kate Thompson

I sometimes imagine I would like my ashes to be scattered in a library. But then the librarians would just have to come in early the next morning to sweep them up again, before the people got there. ~ Neil Gaiman

In the past, a great library was the result of librarians functioning as guardians of culture, tending and caring, selecting and recommending works that maintained and nurtured a cultural heritage. ~ David Gerrold

Librarians hoard the wisdom of humanity. They are the keepers of all knowledge, the guardians at the temples of understanding and devoted protectors of the sanctuary in the midst of uneducated anarchy. ~ Stephen Colbert

Some believe that every library looks like a splendid cemetery of human thoughts and ideas. Could librarians be called grave-diggers? However that may be, like a cemetery, a library will never stop being of use. ~ Lara Biyuts

We need librarians who can handle this tremendous jumble of information that is in cyberspace. ~ Robert Darnton

Oh, fierce librarians, then? Tell you to shush and that sort of thing? ~ Garth Nix

The librarian's mission should be, not like up to now, a mere handling of the book as an object, but rather a know how (mise au point) of the book as a vital function. ~ Jose Ortega Y Gasset

Are all librarians like you, or is it only the feral ones who have been raised by booklice? ~ Margaret Rogerson

It took a bit of popcorn and a library snack bar to make me realize that being a librarian was about more than just giving people information. It was about serving a community. And if the community is hungry for more than just knowledge, then maybe it's about time to open a snack bar. ~ Scott Douglas

I became interested in librarians while researching my first book, about obituaries. With the exception of a few showy eccentrics, like the former soldier in Hitler's army who had a sex change and took up professional whistling, the most engaging obit subjects were librarians. An obituary of a librarian could be about anything under the sun, a woman with a phenomenal memory, who recalled the books her aging patrons read as children - and was also, incidentally, the best sailor on her stretch of the Maine coast - or a man obsessed with maps, who helped automate the Library of Congress's map catalog and paved the way for wonders like Google Maps. ~ Marilyn Johnson

Libraries are the one American institution you shouldn't rip off. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

Librarians, to Melanie, were somewhat in a par with god
who else could be bothered with, and better yet, know the answers to so many diffrent types of questions? Knowledge was power, but a good librarian did not hoard the gift. She taught others how to fknd, where to look, how to see ~ Jodi Picoult

I'll just hang upside down from the wire banana and throw bags of flour at the librarians. ~ Lissa Evans

Librarians are wonderful people, partly because they are, on the whole, unaware of how dangerous knowledge is. Karl Marx upended the political landscape of the twentieth century sitting at a library table. Still, modern librarians are more afraid of ingnorance than they are of the potential devastation that knowledge can bring. (p. 192) ~ Walter Mosley

Of course. Ask your librarian. Always the right answer. ~ Marilyn Johnson

No one ever spoke above a whisper in the staff lounge, but I felt the need to shush her anyway. I gave her my best librarian frown and put one finger to my lips. It works every time. We librarians are like practitioners of Jedi mind-control when it comes to shushing. ~ Nick Pageant

I know that I'll be writing for young adults for a long time. Mostly because I just love the readers and the teachers and librarians that I interact with. ~ Veronica Roth

As adults we choose our own reading material. Depending on our moods and needs we might read the newspaper, a blockbuster novel, an academic article, a women's magazine, a comic, a children's book, or the latest book that just about everyone is reading. No one chastises us for our choice. No one says, 'That's too short for you to read.' No one says, 'That's too easy for you, put it back.' No one says 'You couldn't read that if you tried
it's much too difficult.'
Yet if we take a peek into classrooms, libraries, and bookshops we will notice that children's choices are often mocked, censured, and denied as valid by idiotic, interfering teachers, librarians, and parents. Choice is a personal matter that changes with experience, changes with mood, and changes with need. We should let it be. ~ Mem Fox

All Librarians are members of the Catalogue. That's what you call a coven when it's made up of Librarians instead of witches. Librarians have sorted and alphabetized all the magic that ever thought to put a rabbit and a hat together. Who do you think invented Special Collections? ~ Catherynne M Valente

I don't think people take librarians quite that seriously anymore. ~ Elizabeth Hunter

Lance could be trusted with your life. Librarians are like that. ~ Victoria Abbott

If past history was all that is needed to play the game of money, the richest people would be librarians. ~ Warren Buffett

There is a somewhat time-worn joke about people taking up library work because they like to read : the joke consisting of the fact that librarians have so little time to read. But, I tell you, those who do not, and there are some, are in the wrong profession. ~ Mary Virginia Provines

Miss Rudy, the former Harmony librarian, had single-handedly held off a siege of the town council bent on cutting her funds. She had locked the library doors and hid the only key in her bra, living on water from the toilet tank after the town had shut off water to the building to drive her out. She ate paste to keep up her strength. Oh, they had underestimated her. On the fourth day, the men of the council had capitulated, apologizing for cutting the funds, begging her to open the doors and come out. But she had stayed in the library an extra day, just to show them one could live on books, then marched out at noon on the fifth day, her head held high, and three pounds heavier. She had gained weight! When word got out, her picture made the cover of American Libraries magazine. Admiring letters poured in from librarians around the world – beaten down, beleaguered librarians who had drawn strength from her bravery. She answered each one in flowing, Palmer-method, handwritten script. ~ Philip Gulley

Six: everyone - and when I say everyone, I mean absolutely,positively everyone, from the librarians to the students to the staff to the oldest, cruiser janitor - was piss-down-their-legs scared of Miles Richter.
Of all the crazy things I heard about East Shoal, that was the only thing I couldn't believe. ~ Francesca Zappia

My parents, and librarians along the way, taught me about the space between words; about the margins, where so many juicy moments of life and spirit and friendship could be found. In a library, you could find miracles and truth and you might find something that would make you laugh so hard that you get shushed, in the friendliest way. ~ Anne Lamott

Does he think the job of a librarian is so simple, so empty of content, that anyone can step up and do it for a thank-you and a cup of tea? Does he think that all a librarian does is to tidy the shelves? ~ Philip Pullman

Forgive, I hope you won't be upset, but when I was a boy I used to look up and see you behind your desk, so near but far away, and, how can I say this, I used to think that you were Mrs. God, and that the library was a whole world, and that no matter what part of the world or what people or thing I wanted to see and read, you'd find and give it to me. ~ Ray Bradbury

Like a good American, I wanted to sue somebody. But like a good librarian, I just sat at my desk and waited. ~ Rebecca Makkai

Here, you carry these. I may need my hands free.

Why the hell are we taking 'The Dream of the Red Chamber?' Light reading, if we get stuck on the subway?

No, in case we get stopped by some of Qing Song's minions who can't read Chinese.

Oh. Right. Hey, that's not a bad thought. Though if we're going to be throwing them away anyhow, why not take 'The Investiture of the Gods'...

Because I like 'The Investiture of the Gods' and I don't like 'The Dream of the Red Chamber'. ~ Genevieve Cogman

He told me that archivists and librarians were opposite personas. True librarians are unsentimental. They're pragmatic, concerned with the newest, cleanest, most popular books. Archivists, on the other hand, are only peripherally interested in what other people like, and much prefer the rare to the useful. ~ Avi Steinberg

I've had librarians say to me, "People in my school don't agree with homosexuality, so it's difficult to have your book on the shelves." Here's the thing: Being gay is not an issue, it is an identity. It is not something that you can agree or disagree with. It is a fact, and must be defended and represented as a fact.
To use another part of my identity as an example: if someone said to me, "I'm sorry, but we can't carry that book because it's so Jewish and some people in my school don't agree with Jewish culture," I would protest until I reached my last gasp. Prohibiting gay books is just as abhorrent ...
Discrimination is not a legitimate point of view. Silencing books silences the readers who need them most. And silencing these readers can have dire, tragic consequences. Never forget who these readers are. They are just as curious and anxious about life as any other teenager. ~ David Levithan

On this particular autumn night, only the prospect of another solitary evening lies before her. She will fry her chop and read herself to sleep, no doubt with a tale of wizardry and romance. Then, in dreams that strike even her as trite, Miss Dark will go adventuring in chain mail and silk. Tomorrow morning she will wake up alone, and do it all again. Poor Judy Dark! Poor little librarians of the world, those girls, secretly lovely, their looks marred forever by the cruelty of a pair of big black eyeglasses! ~ Michael Chabon

When I was a child, it was a matter of pride that I could plow through a Nancy Drew story in one afternoon, and begin another in the evening ... I was probably trying to impress the librarians who kept me supplied with books. ~ Kathleen Norris

There's no question that libraries are wonderful, but nostalgia is too thin a reed for librarians to cling to in a time of such transition. Nostalgia can actually be dangerous. For one thing, thinking of libraries as they were ages ago and wanting them to remain the same is the last thing we should want for them. For another, our nostalgic view doesn't give libraries enough credit. Libraries offer a whole slew of services that we ignore when we just focus on pleasant reading rooms. ~ John Palfrey

A book has been taken. A book has been taken? You summoned the Watch," Carrot drew himself up proudly, "because someone's taken a book? You think that's worse than murder?"
The Librarian gave him the kind of look other people would reserve for people who said things like "What's so bad about genocide? ~ Terry Pratchett

A Book Keeper! Gods of the word, they are. Finest of the brave. You know, it's them that keep books, (he says) that know things in the end. ~ Simon P. Clark

The most successful students are those who know that they can do better than grasp at the closest source of information. Reference librarians, who spend their days learning what is available in a broad range of fields and how to search for it, provide a great service for students and other library patrons. ~ John Palfrey

Here is where people,
One frequently finds,
Lower their voices
And raise their minds.
~ Richard Armour

Burnout for librarians seems to me both foolish and unnecessary. . . . Work hard, work well, work effectively. Work until quitting time. Then go home and enjoy the rest of your life. If that leaves an unsolved problem, tell your boss on the way out the door or write the boss a note. ~ Herbert S. White

Isn't it what all librarians strive toward, at least in the movies and cliches? Silence, invisibility, nothing but a rambling cloud of old book dust. ~ Rebecca Makkai

Librarians are your very best friend. And don't ever think otherwise. ~ Rett MacPherson

Teachers and librarians are some of my favorite people, especially since I was a teacher myself. I love talking to them because they have wonderful ideas about how to share books, and especially about how to share my books with kids. ~ Rick Riordan

I walked straight to the library. Mrs. Bloom, the librarian, always knows everything. ~ Augusta Scattergood

the proper mission of librarians: "to improve society through facilitating knowledge creation in their communities. ~ The Atlas Of New Librarianship

Librarians were like guardian angels, with graying hair and beady eyes, magnified through reading glasses, and always read to recommend new literary windows to gaze through. ~ Ellen Hopkins

I believe librarians, like English teachers, sit at the right hand of God. ~ William Deresiewicz

Adult librarians are like lazy bakers: their patrons want a jelly doughnut, so they give them a jelly doughnut. Children's librarians are ambitious bakers: 'You like the jelly doughnut? I'll get you a jelly doughnut. But you should try my cruller, too. My cruller is gonna blow your mind, kid. ~ John Green

Sam smirked. "You have a favorite librarian?"
"You've got a favorite speakeasy, don'tcha?" Memphis shot back. ~ Libba Bray

But put two librarians' heads together, and mountains move. ~ Richard Peck

When I tell people I went to library school, the most common reaction is either "You're joking, right?" or "They have schools for librarians? Do they teach you how to properly sssh people? ~ Scott Douglas

There are no such things as book hoarders, only aspiring librarians ~ Inafetse Santos

Librarians were somewhat on a par with God-who else could be bothered with, and better yet, know the answers to so many different types of questions? Knowledge was power, but a good librarian did not hoard the gift. She taught others how to find, where to look, how to see. ~ Jodi Picoult

My alma mater was books, a good library ... I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity. ~ Malcolm X

Even ymbrynes can't touch them. In the stories, only special adepts called librarians can see and handle them - and a librarian hasn't been born for a thousand years. If the library exists, all Jack would find there are empty shelves. ~ Ransom Riggs

It was immediately clear that the book had been undisturbed for a very long time, perhaps even since it had been laid to rest. The librarian fetched a checked duster, and wiped away the dust, a black, thick, tenacious Victorian dust, a dust composed of smoke and fog particles accumulated before the Clean Air acts. ~ A.S. Byatt

It's funny that we think of libraries as quiet demure places where we are shushed by dusty, bun-balancing, bespectacled women. The truth is libraries are raucous clubhouses for free speech, controversy and community. Librarians have stood up to the Patriot Act, sat down with noisy toddlers and reached out to illiterate adults. Libraries can never be shushed. ~ Paula Poundstone

Such fascinating things, libraries. She closes her eyes. She could
walk inside and step into a murder, a love story, a complete account
of somebody else's life, or mutiny on the high seas. Such potential;
such adventure - there's a shimmer of malfeasance in trying other
ways of being. ~ Ashley Hay