So what is the nature of this library? What function does it serve other than being a filing system for books? What, to use the phrase beloved of cultural criticism, does it say about me, and to whom is it addressing this message?

Linda Grant, I Murdered My Library

Hermetic quote Grant Murdered library

Consider also:

  1. “Whatever, it was a hot dream minus the squid part”
  2. “The principle which presides over the Rosicrucian Society is the truth; and he who knows the truth, and follows it in practice, is a member of the society over which the truth practises.”
  3. “Natural, rational life is the basis of all genuine spiritual development”
  4. “The past (the tradition that leads to our electronic present) is, for the Web user, irrelevant, since all that counts is what is currently displayed. Compared to a book that betrays its age in its physical aspect, a text called up on the screen has no history. Electronic space is frontierless. Sites-that is to say, specific, self-defined homelands-are founded on it but neither limit nor possess it, like water on water. The Web is quasi-instantaneous; it occupies no time except the nightmare of a constant present. All surface and no volume, all present and no past, the Web aspires to be (advertises itself as) every user’s home, in which communication is possible with every other user at the speed of thought. That is its main characteristic: speed.”
  5. “You dirty little bookworm, you.”