Alberto Manguel
Alberto Manguel
Alberto Manguelis an Argentine Canadian anthologist, translator, essayist, novelist and editor. He is the author of numerous non-fiction books such as The Dictionary of Imaginary Places, A History of Reading, The Library at Nightand Homer's Iliad and Odyssey: A Biography; and novels such as News From a Foreign Country Came. Though almost all of Manguel's books were written in English, two of his novelswere written in Spanish, and El regreso has not yet been published in English. Manguel has also...
NationalityArgentinian
ProfessionWriter
children book night
I remember, as a child, the confusion of not knowing what this place was where I was supposed to spend the night: it's a disquieting experience for a child. And what I would do was quickly unpack my books and go back to a book I knew well and make sure the same text and the same illustrations were there.
night voice library
At night, here in the library, the ghosts have voices.
book night space
But at night, when the library lamps are lit, the outside world disappears and nothing but the space of books remains in existence.
writing night light
In the light, we read the inventions of others; in the darkness we invent our own stories.
morning night echoes
If the library in the morning suggests an echo of the severe and reasonable wishful order of the world, the library at night seems to rejoice in the world's essential, joyful muddle.
book nerd poor
Slothful, feeble, pretentious, pedantic, elitist - these are some of the epithets that eventually become associated with the absent minded scholar, the poor sighted reader, the book worm, the nerd.
ambition reader bounds
But a reader's ambition knows no bounds.
thinking names trying
I can understand that there are those who can think and imagine the world without words, but I think that once you find the words that name your experience, then suddenly that experience becomes grounded, and you can use it and you can try to understand it.
darkness speech
Darkness promotes speech.
assuming reader
Every text assumes a reader.
book pages who-we-are
Our books will bear witness for or against us, our books reflect who we are and who we have been, our books hold the share of pages granted to us from the Book of Life. By the books we call ours we will be judged
reading social contracts
reading is at the beginning of the social contract
book hands fire
From fire, water, the passage of time, neglectful readers, and the hand of the censor, each of my books has escaped to tell me its story.
reading progression reader
I quickly learned that reading is cumulative and proceeds by geometrical progression: each new reading builds upon whatever the reader has read before.