The Librarian Quotes

#1. The problem of the librarian is that books are multi-dimensional in their subject matter but must be ordered on one-dimensional shelves.

Neal Stephenson

#2. When I go to a library and I see the librarian at her desk reading, I'm afraid to interrupt her, even though she sits there specifically so that she may be interrupted, even though being interrupted for reasons like this by people like me is her very job.

Aaron Swartz

#3. The Librarian looked at his charges approvingly, made his last rounds of the slumbering shelves, and then dragged his blanket underneath his desk, ate a goodnight banana, and fell asleep.

Terry Pratchett

#4. 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

#5. Remember, if confronted by a librarian while looking for a book to check out, do not attempt to escape by climbing a tree. There are no trees in the library and the precious moments it will take you to look around and realize this will allow the librarian to strike. Don't become a statistic.

Joseph Fink

#6. The Librarian was not familiar with love, which had always struck him as a bit ethereal and soppy, but kindness, on the other hand, was practical. You knew where you were with kindness, especially if you were holding a pie it had just given you.

Terry Pratchett

#7. Ghostly, in his mind, Ben heard the librarian reading to the little ones: Who is that trip-trapping upon my bridge? The children lean forward, all the old fascination glistening in their eyes: will the monster be bested ... or will It feed?

Stephen King

#8. Banks aren't neutral observers, they're ... the people who caused the mess. It's like someone who's wet themselves in a public building insisting they choose which mop the librarian fetches to clear up the puddle.

Mark Steel

#9. Teenagers travel in droves, packs, swarms ... To the librarian, they're a gaggle of geese. To the cook, they're a scourge of locusts. To department stores, they're a big beautiful exaltation of larks ... all lovely and loose and jingly.

Bernice Fitz-Gibbon

#10. The time is when a library is a school, and the librarian is the highest sense a teacher. - Melvil Dewey, 1876

John Palfrey

#11. She loved the library and was anxious to worship the lady in charge. But the librarian had other things on her mind. She hated children anyhow.

Betty Smith

#12. Pious Jews saw heaven as a vast library, with the Archangel Metatron as the librarian: the books in the shelves there pressed themselves together to make room for a newcomer.

Paul Johnson

#13. The Librarian liked being best man. You were allowed to kiss bridesmaids, and they weren't allowed to run away.

Terry Pratchett

#14. The librarian had imagined he could summon a given book to perch on his hand just by shouting out its call number, but in actuality they were just too willful, and some were actively predatory. The

Lev Grossman

#15. A book is a fragile creature, it suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the elements and clumsy hands. so the librarian protects the books not only against mankind but also against nature and devotes his life to this war with the forces of oblivion.

Umberto Eco

#16. There are distinct duties of a poet laureate. I plan a reading series at the Library of Congress and advise the librarian. The rest is how I want to promote poetry.

Rita Dove

#17. Perhaps the two most valuable and satisfactory products of American civilization are the librarian on the one hand and the cocktail in the other.

Louis Stanley

#18. I got up and went into the library to see how much I owed them.
The librarian said $32 even and you've owed it for eighteen years. I didn't deny anything. Because I don't understand how time passes. I have had those books. I have often thought of them. The library is only two blocks away.

Grace Paley

#19. He helped the Librarian up. There was a red glow in the ape's eyes. It had tried to steal his books. This was probably the best proof any wizard could require that the trolleys were brainless.

Terry Pratchett

#20. The human mind was a deep and abiding mystery and the Librarian was glad he didn't have one anymore.

Terry Pratchett

#21. After all, it's the librarian's sworn purpose to bring books together with their one true reader.

Kate Morton

#22. As a child, my number one best friend was the librarian in my grade school. I actually believed all those books belonged to her.

Erma Bombeck

#23. Rincewind had been his assistant and his friend, and was a good man when it came to peeling a banana. He had also been uniquely good at running away from things. He was not, the Librarian considered, the type to be easily caught. There

Terry Pratchett

#24. You get all sorts of people in the library, and the librarian gets it all ...

Terry Pratchett

#25. The librarian thought the problem was just that the right books weren't breeding with each other and proposed a forced mating program. The library committee had an epic secret meeting about the ethics of literary eugenics which ended in a furious deadlock.

Lev Grossman

#26. The time was when a library was very like a museum and the librarian a mouser among dusty books. The time is when the library is a school and the librarian in the highest sense a teacher.

Melvil Dewey

#27. It was as though I had been dying of thirst and the librarian had handed me a five gallon bucket of water. I drank and drank. The only reason I am here and not in prison is because of that woman. I was a loser, but she showed me the power of reading.

Gary Paulsen

#28. I grew up in a household without a TV. We lived next door to a library for a while, and at one point, I checked out all the books in the fairy tale section. I remember the librarian's quiet smile as I'd bring back one stack and exchange it for another.

Victoria Hanley

#29. At this time on a weekday morning, the library was refuge to the retired, the unemployed, and the unemployable ... 'I'm not always this gabby,' the librarian said. 'It's just so nice to talk to someone who isn't constructing a conspiracy theory or watching videos of home accidents on YouTube.

Myla Goldberg

#30. I'm just the librarian. I can only give you the books. I can't give you the answers.

Kami Garcia

#31. It makes logical sense that 168 is a greater number than 17, so why would you shelve 168 first? Because a librarian is always right. To the common man, this looks wrong, but to the librarian, this is right, because a librarian is never wrong.

Scott Douglas

#32. That's the duty of the old,' said the Librarian, 'to be anxious on the behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old.'
They sat for a while longer, and then parted, for it was late, and they were old and anxious.

Philip Pullman

#33. The librarian, the warrior, the free spirit ... archetypes are a great jumping off point to help clarify where we want to go with a character.

Kristan Higgins

#34. The Librarian has spoken, sally! We Dare Not Disobey!

James Turner

#35. He pointed at the caiques, but Peppone declined the librarian's offer, saying only, "Do you think the proprietor of the inn where we met will report us?"
"The money I left him was more than enough to silence his alarms," said Danaco. "Gold has an amazing habit of altering memories.

Michelle Franklin

#36. It took me awhile to learn the rules. OK, it took the librarian in me weeks of careful obsessive research to learn the rules. There was a label maker involved. I'd rather not go into it.

Molly Harper

#37. The librarian isn't a clerk who happens to work in a library. A librarian is a data hound, a guide, a sherpa and a teacher. The librarian is the interface between reams of data and the untrained but motivated user.

Seth Godin

#38. The librarian is a caricature of librarian - short white hair, horn-rimmed glasses, a bosom you could hide Christmas presents under and a New England-tight-ass face that looks like she hasn's taken a shit since her family came over on the Mayflower.

Bart Yates

#39. I thought research would be more glamorous, somehow. I'd give the librarian a secret code word and he'd give me the one book I needed and whisper the necessary page numbers. Like a speakeasy. With books.

Libba Bray

#40. The librarian must be the librarian militant before he can be the librarian triumphant.

Melvil Dewey

#41. How many books do you have here?" Corliss asked. "Two million, one hundred thousand, and eleven," the librarian said proudly, but Corliss was frightened. What happens to the world when that many books go unread? And what happens to the unread authors of those unread books?

Sherman Alexie

#42. I walked straight to the library. Mrs. Bloom, the librarian, always knows everything.

Augusta Scattergood

#43. I was rescued by librarians. It was librarians who said 'maybe you would like to read The Hardy Boys as well as Nancy Drew.' It is true for me, as for so many countless others, that librarians saved my life, my internal life.

Gloria Steinem

#44. The not-so-bookish librarian was half angel, half she-devil, so sayeth the rumor mill.

Ellen Hopkins

#45. Trivia monologue. You are so the man for me.

Molly Harper

#46. She fought back the tears in her eyes, because though she no longer felt she was one of the Clayr, she still felt she was a librarian and always would be, no matter what else she had become as well.

Garth Nix

#47. Humph. Looking around for the sword, are you? Well, it's a better idea than thrashing around at random.'
'The Prince,' said Master Horace repressively, 'will inform us of his intentions when he wishes to do so. We are here to serve, not to quest
'
'Yes, it's the sword,' Edoran told her.

Hilari Bell

#48. The first purpose of a librarian is to preserve and defend our books. Sometimes, that means dying for them - or making someone else die for them. Tota est scientia.

Rachel Caine

#49. In general, librarians enjoyed special requests. A reference librarian is someone who likes the chase. When librarians read for pleasure, they often pick a good mystery.

Karen Joy Fowler

#50. Pulverized by literature,' thought Miss Laburnum. 'The ideal way for a librarian to die.

Margaret Mahy

#51. I don't want to end up a bureaucrat in the time-management business for God or a librarian cataloguing timeless truths. Salvation is kicking in the womb of creation right now, any time now. Pay attention.

Eugene H. Peterson

#52. If books were girls and reading was s-ss-ssss-fucking, this would be the biggest whorehouse in the county and I'd be the most ruthless pimp you ever met. Whap the girls on the butts and send them off to their tricks as fast and often as I can.

Joe Hill

#53. Ingrid dresses more like a librarian than any librarian in the history of libraries.

Melissa De La Cruz

#54. I wanted to be a librarian from a very young age. Some of my earliest memories are being taken to the local library. I ended up working as a bookseller. Becoming a writer was the logical offshoot of being a reader.

Michael Scott

#55. Librarian is a service occupation. Gas station attendant of the mind.

Richard Powers

#56. A collection of good books, with a soul to it in the shape of a librarian, becomes a vitalized power among the impulses by which the world goes on to improvement.

Justin Winsor

#57. Got it," I say as he hands me a pencil skirt, a crisp long-sleeved white shirt, and some low black heels. "This is what I'm wearing?" I'm a librarian. "Can I safely assume the accessories will include glasses on a chain and my hair in a bun? Should I shush people tonight?

J.A. Huss

#58. The mind's cross indexing puts the best librarian to shame.

Sharon Begley

#59. The day the library was shut down, he thought, some maiden librarian had moved down the room, pushing each chair against its table. Carefully, with a plodding precision that was the cachet of herself.

Richard Matheson

#60. Ow! Dammit!"
"Watch your language. This is a holy place."
"Hah!" I grumbled. "If it's so holy, why don't they have a holy elevator? Or a holy librarian who can go fetch the blasted book for us?

Cecily White

#61. She looks like a librarian with some money and good taste in clothes, but underneath the Versace, she's Godzilla with tits.

Richard Kadrey

#62. He would think God was a dyke librarian, and he would know the fear of her.

Joe Hill

#63. No one looks too closely at a librarian. People are afraid of going blind from the glare of ssss-ssso much compressed wisdom.

Joe Hill

#64. conversing, in low tones, with the asylum librarian, an alumna

Sylvia Plath

#65. My mother was a children's librarian. I remember when traditional stories were revised for modern audiences until they bore only a nodding acquaintance with the originals, but were released as 'authentic Indian stories' when they were, in fact, nothing of the kind.

Patricia Briggs

#66. I am not the kind of girl who trusts a man to tell her everything she needs to know in his own due time, so I did some research on my sire. You can take the girl out of the library, but you can't take the neurotic, compulsively curious librarian out of the girl.

Molly Harper

#67. To my thinking, a great librarian must have a clear head, a strong hand, and, above all, a great heart. And when I look into the future, I am inclined to think that most of the men who achieve this greatness will be women.

Melvil Dewey

#68. I step straight toward the female librarian. She looks soft, as if she's been raised in a box and purely milk-fed, like veal.

Joshilyn Jackson

#69. The bottom line is: if you were a jerk in your original life, you're probably going to be a bigger undead jerk, If you were a decent person, say a juvenile-services librarian with a secret collection of unicorn figurines, you're probably going to be a kinder, gentler vampire.

Molly Harper

#70. I found the idea of being a librarian very appealing
working in a place where people had to whisper and only speak when necessary. If only the world were like that!

Peter Cameron

#71. In the last century, I earned my living as a librarian, and I loved it. I'd have to take some classes to get up to speed with 21st-century librarianship.

Elizabeth McCracken

#72. Lirael left in a daze of happiness. She had survived the ordeal. She had been accepted. She was going to be a librarian!

Garth Nix

#73. even the required Smart Librarian glasses.

Rachel Caine

#74. Finally the world would see my full range of comedy characters - from grouchy librarian to Russian librarian.

Tina Fey

#75. He's like Super Librarian, y'know? Everyone forgets, Willow, that knowledge is the ultimate weapon.

Joss Whedon

#76. I love librarians. They always make me feel like the world's gonna be AOK.

Danah Boyd

#77. As she starts to speak, my mind is suddenly filled with every hot-teacher fantasy I've ever had. They're playing out in my mind right next to the ones about the seemingly sexually repressed librarian who's really a leather-wearing, handcuff-bearing nymphomaniac.

Emma Chase

#78. With a slow wink, he set the book in Tamaqua's hands. "One of my favorites.

C.J. Milbrandt

#79. I'm kind of a reluctant Anglophile. My mother's a children's librarian, and all of the children's literature I read was from her childhood - E. Nesbit and Dickens, which isn't children's literature at all, but I was sort of steeped in English literature. I thought I was of that world.

Jefferson Mays

#80. I have found the most valuable thing in my wallet is my library card.

Laura Bush

#81. Eratosthenes, the mapmaker who was the first man to accurately measure the size of the Earth, was a librarian.

Ken Jennings

#82. My work is whatever I want it to be, and I report to no one regularly. The head librarian
the man in charge of the University's entire collection
is a figurehead, well-to-do and poorly read, with whom I have only perfunctory contact.

Martha Cooley

#83. Librarians who are arguing and lobbying for clever e-book lending solutions are completely missing the point. They are defending the library-as-warehouse concept, as opposed to fighting for the future, which is librarian as producer, concierge, connector, teacher, and impresario.

Seth Godin

#84. I'm of a fearsome mind to throw my arms around every living librarian who crosses my path, on behalf of the souls they never knew they saved.

Barbara Kingsolver

#85. 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

#86. Now ... get Thoth a raspberry chocolate latte with the cream and chocolate sprinkles! Thoth commands, librarian! Obey! Sprinkles! THOTH HAS SPOKEN!

James Turner

#87. I know that sounds too earnest, but it's true. I mean, I would rather be a librarian, but I worry about the job security. Books may be temporary; dicks are forever.

George R R Martin

#88. To all my librarian friends, champions of books, true magicians in the House of Life. Without you, this writer would be lost in the Dust.

Rick Riordan

#89. She was no longer a shy Second Assistant Librarian. She was the Abhorsen-in-Waiting.

Garth Nix

#90. 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

#91. One of the reasons I decided to enter this profession," one of the Riot Librarrrians wrote, "was because I'm in love with information, and the library remains one of the few spaces in our lives where information is not a commodity ... There's a subversive element to librarianship that I adore.

Marilyn Johnson

#92. The role of a librarian is to make sense of the world of information. If that's not a qualification for superhero-dom, what is?

Nancy Pearl

#93. Ravna became a librarian. "The ultimate dilettante!" Lynne had teased.

Vernor Vinge

#94. Lady Queen," he said, "You've given me all I want. You're the queen a librarian dreams of.

Kristin Cashore

#95. She remembered the conversation in the Library, as forgetting was the last thing a fully-trained Librarian should do. Memories were as important as books, and almost as important as proper indexing.

Genevieve Cogman

#96. He was a thin, elegant-looking man with precise symmetrical features and the hushed, disapproving manner of a senior librarian.

Alastair Reynolds

#97. She was the type of librarian who has "Reading is supposed to be educational, not fun" tattooed somewhere.

Molly Harper

#98. Librarians have always been among the most thoughtful and helpful people. They are teachers without a classroom. No libraries, no progress.

Willard Scott

#99. And the smell of the library was always the same - the musty odour of old clothes mixed with the keener scent of unwashed bodies, creating what the chief librarian had once described as 'the steam of the social soup.'

Peter Ackroyd

#100. It was like when you're a little kid and you run into your teacher or librarian at the grocery store or Wal-mart and it's just so startling, because it never occurred to you they existed outside of school.

Sarah Dessen