A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint…. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting. – Henry David Thoreau

Psychopathia librorum…. I surround myself with the printed word. – Sven Birkerts (b.1951), “Notes from a Confession,” The Agni Review, No.22 (1985)

Borrowers of books — those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes. – Charles Lamb, Essays of Elia, "The Two Races of Men," 1822