“In the possession of books unread, there is not shame but virtue: the pursuit of a supercool project: the production of a perfect-for-you library; an intellectual armory.”
“I do believe a great library is both a practical asset and a personal achievement. It’s a way of saying, this is who I am; this is what I value. Saying it to yourself, most of all.”
“It is paradoxically the limitations of the physical book — the fact that it can only be in one place at a time; that fact that it bears marks of its use; the fact that when a friend presses a book into your hands, they are actually giving something up—that make it so productive as a cultural object.”