If reading is a craft that allows us to remember the common experience of humankind, it follows that totalitarian governments will try to suppress the memory held by the page. Under such circumstances, the reader’s struggle is against oblivion.

Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher]

Hermetic quote Manuel Library at Night reader's struggle against oblivion

Consider also:

  1. “Every library both embraces and rejects. Every library is by definition the result of choice, and necessarily limited in its scope. And every choice excludes another, the choice not made. The act of reading parallels endlessly the act of censorship.”
  2. “More than anything, memory resembles a library in alphabetical disorder, and with no collected works by anyone.”
  3. “It’s an old thing, made of parchment and leather. Some herbalist on my mother’s side of the family started it ages ago. The book’s composed of page after page of ink drawings of plants with descriptions of their medical uses. My father added a section on edible plants that was my guidebook to keeping us alive after his death. For a long time, I’ve wanted to record my own knowledge in it. Things I learned from experience or from Gale, and then the information I picked up when I was training for the Games.”
  4. “The books he read as a scholar, full of the wisdom of the ancients, must have been balanced in his mind by the questions left unanswered and the treatises never written. His own library of parchment and paper was grounded by his imaginary library of forgotten or neglected subjects of study and reflection.”
  5. “If you held the belief, child, that I knew everything that hid under every stone and leaf, I must disappoint you. I may have my own understanding of how the art works, sharpened by long years of memory, but I do not know how it will work for you. There is a reason I call magic an art, rather than a science. I might guess, but in guessing too hastily I might influence, or even diminish, your talents—taint you with my predictions.”