I honestly just remembered this story but my neighbour runs a hotel with a library where they have a “take a book, leave a book” policy and one day he went into the library to find that the shelves had been completely cleared out, nothing was left except for one little thing.
What was left behind, you ask?
A single copy of The Book Thief.
People think I’m kidding when I say I’m going to have a library in my house when I’m older
and I’m like no
you don’t understand
I have to
There is no other way to fit everything
classmate: what are you reading
me: (holds book up higher to show the cover while continuing to read)
And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.
So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.
Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country (via sydandstuff)
think about the concept of a library. that’s one thing that humanity didn’t fuck up. we did a good thing when we made libraries
