Catalogues of imaginary libraries are an obscure but fruitful area of collecting. The tradition of imaginary books, which exist only within other books, goes back at least to Rabelais, who invented a list of book titles for the Abbey of Saint-Victor in Gargantua and Pantagruel (c.1532). – Emi Hastings, “Catalogues of Imaginary Libraries,” 2014

A good book on your shelf is a friend that turns its back on you and remains a friend. – Author unknown

Readers of novels. I sometimes think that I could, if put to it, pick the real readers of novels out of a crowd. They have a strangeness about the eye, almost as if there were an extra bit of lens on the cornea…. The glance of a reader shows me a soul with a different orientation to time… – Sven Birkerts (b.1951), “Notes from a Confession,” The Agni Review, No.22 (1985)