Librarians Quotes

As if on cue, a line of silhouettes emerged from behind a desert scrub—shapes that moved like cats. They wandered through the landscape of corpses, touching each with a gentle nudge. They grew closer, and it became clear that Chuluum was leading the other cats on their sorrowful homage, giving the fallen librarians the honor they deserved.

~ Rahma Krambo

Why do prostitutes when they get straight always try and get so prim? It's like long-repressed librarian-ambitions come flooding out.

~ David Foster Wallace

And Sarah still looked like the sexiest librarian on earth, which is as those of you who frequent libraries know means very sexy indeed, but with that added owlish touch that drives you wild.

~ Kim Stanley Robinson

My ultimate authority would be the school librarian Mrs. Greenbacher.

~ Shawn Stewart Ruff

Or possibly possessiveness was a characteristic of draconic affection. They were supposed to be hoarders, after all. Not so different from Librarians.

~ Genevieve Cogman

Google can bring you back 100,000 answers. A librarian can bring you back the right one.

~ Neil Gaiman

I finally found my way to the Really Restricted Section, where they keep the kind of books most scholars aren't even supposed to know exist. I knocked on the closed door, said the proper passwords, and the door opened before me. I walked in, and the ghost of the Head Librarian, a thin, dusty presence, with dark eyes and a disapproving look, appeared before me, blocking my way. (He had been eaten by a book, then brought back by the other books, apparently because they approved of him. Because even though he didn't have much time for people, he loved books.)

~ Simon R. Green

The librarian was explaining the benefits of the Dewey decimal system to her junior—benefits that extended to every area of life. It was orderly, like the universe. It had logic. It was dependable. Using it allowed a kind of moral uplift, as one's own chaos was also brought under control.'Whenever I am troubled,' said the librarian, 'I think about the Dewey decimal system.''Then what happens?' asked the junior, rather overawed.'Then I understand that trouble is just something that has been filed in the wrong place. That is what Jung was explaining of course—as the chaos of our unconscious contents strive to find their rightful place in the index of consciousness.

~ Jeanette Winterson

Rare-book people have this in common with poets: they too are born, not made.

~ E. Millicent Sowerby

The library was a great sprawling complex with rolls and rolls of paper tucked into many shelves. Between the reading rooms were courtyards with living fountains and singing birds and butterflies that would transform into handsome young women to guide or entertain anyone who stayed there any length of time. I saw one among the stacks, explaining an older style of calligraphy to the newly appointed Heavenly Marine Official of the South China Sea. In another wing, a librarian stepped from her chrysalis for the first time, reciting T’ang Dynasty poetry to the flowers. That’s how I knew I was in the right section.

~ Larissa Lai

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

The secret of a good librarian is that he never reads anything more of the literature in his charge than the title and the table of contents. Anyone who lets himself go and starts reading a book is lost as a librarian...He's bound to lose perspective.

~ Robert Musil

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

We don’t have to destroy the library of the past. We just need to give it a face-lift.

~ Scott Douglas

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

The loudest elderly women always had the quietest elderly husbands.

~ Scott Douglas

...killing rats wasn’t in my job description.

~ Scott Douglas

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

There’s something deep in the heart of every person that wantsto protect culture. The only thing about my pending career thatwas changed because of 9/11 was that I began to see it was the community,not the librarian, that was important to the library. Librarianswere only as important as the community they inspired. If Iwas going to continue with this career, my job wouldn’t be to protectinformation, it would be to bring the community together andinspire them to appreciate everything a library stands for.

~ Scott Douglas

I was under the librarians' protection. Civil servants and servants of civility, they had my back. They would be whatever they needed to be that day: information professionals, teachers, police, community organizers, computer technicians, historians, confidantes, clerks, social workers, storytellers, or, in this case, guardians of my peace.

~ Marilyn Johnson

Mr. O'Donnell was at the library counter, performing the sort of grim rituals librarians perform with index cards and stumpy pencils and those rubber stamps with columns of rotating numbers. Ms. Auerbach! What will it be today? Camus? Cervantes? Actually I'm looking for a book of poetry by Emily DickinsonHe paused somberly, toying with the twirled tip of his mustache. No matter how seriously librarians are engaged in their work, they are always glad to be interrupted when the theme is books. It makes no difference to them how simple the search is or how behind on time either of you might be running - they consider all queries scrupulously. They love to have their knowledge tested. They lie in wait, they will not be rushed.

~ Hilary Thayer Hamann

To be great at something, you must look to the great ones of thepast and improve on the ideas and techniques that they started. Iwas motivated to do better—to improve on the ideas of others.

~ Scott Douglas

Nik loved the library, but it went beyond the books; he enjoyed the solitude. In the library, nobody expected him to be strong, or brave, or daring. No need for wrestling to prove he was tougher, no showing teeth to keep other kids from thinking they could get the better of him.

~ Liv Rider

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

Lad, I think we've got what we need for this page. Why don't you go have a look around? And keep out of trouble, or that Madam Sidler will scare you silly. Oskar put a hand to the side of his mouth and lowered his voice. She's everywhere.Can I help you? said Madam Sidler from the corner of the room. Oskar jumped with such violence that his spectacles clattered to the floor. I heard you mention my name and thought I might be of assistance.Good heavens, woman! Oskar exclaimed. We're fine!

~ Andrew Peterson

In common with librarians the world over, the two women were used to dealing with a disproportionate quota of odd people acting strangely.

~ José Latour

We find the library world, like the real world, impossible to understand on a rational basis. We turn then to the outer reaches of our mind and treat librarianship with the irrationality that it deserves. While we most often turn to humour merely to enjoy ourselves, we do sometimes do so to make a point. That point is simply that the world of librarianship is ridiculous and that we should all take a far less serious view of our work. What we accomplish as librarians is not, after all, likely to change the world.~ Norman D. Stevens

~ Peter Gellatly

You cannot have a really terrific library without at least one terrific librarian, the way you cannot have a really terrific bedroom unless you can lock the door.

~ Lemony Snicket

I have always imagined that paradise will be some kind of library. - Jorge Luis Borges, “Poems of the Gifts

~ Tatyana Eckstrand

Do you ever hide books you've read over and over again because you're so sick of them?''Oh, definitely. When they ask for them, I say the book fairy came to get it. One time they saw one of the books at the library, so now they think the librarians are book fairies.

~ Gina Sheridan

Blaming the library for exposure to pornography is like blaming the lake if your child walks up to it alone, falls in and then drowns. – David Sawyer, Spokesman-Review, 18 December 2000

~ Tatyana Eckstrand

I deserve a swift kick in the shorts for all the times I’ve stubbornly wound my way through the library stacks, my mule head leading the way, searching fruitlessly for information a librarian could put in my hands in a matter of minutes. – Michael Perry, Handbook for Freelance Writing

~ Tatyana Eckstrand

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

Someone has said of books that they are our 'amplest heritages' of thought, and so they are. That doesn't necessarily mean that they must be learned or profound. They are food for the mind and different minds require different foods ; everyone is better for variety. Whatever stimulates the mind feeds it, be it fact, fiction or fable. That is where our responsibility lies ; in knowing what builds good mental blood and brawn, and in dispensing that only. Don't ever let yourself think you haven't time to read.

~ Mary Virginia Provines

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

This is overdue. Quite a bit, I'm afraid. I apologize. We moved to Topeka when I was very small, and Mother accidentally packed it up with the linens. I have traveled a long way to return it, and I know the fine must be large, but I have no money. As it is a book of fairy tales, I thought payment of a first-born child would be acceptable. I always loved the library. I'm sure she'll be happy there.

~ Ellen Klages

The real heroes are the librarians and teachers who at no small risk to themselves refuse to lie down and play dead for censors.

~ Bruce Coville

She, of all people, knew the sacred trust that word -- librarian -- implied. Because a librarian was supposed to to be a spiritual, intellectual mentor who kept your secrets and didn't give you a funny look when you checked out a book on the care and feeding of pythons...A librarian opened up new doors for you, intellectually, too, without shoving you through them.A librarian was important.

~ Beth Fantaskey

Everybody should have a librarian.

~ Beth Fantaskey