Gass

“Every day, from the library, books are borrowed and taken away like tubs of chicken to be consumed, though many are also devoured on the premises, in the Reading Room, where traditionally the librarian, wearing her clichés, shushes an already silent multitude and glares at the offending air. Yet there, or in someone’s rented room, or even by a sunny pool—who can predict the places where the encounter will occur?—the discovery will be made. And a finger will find the place and mark it before the books’ covers come closed; or its reader will rise and bear her prize out of the library into the kitchen, back to her dorm room, or, along with flowers and candy, to a bedside, in a tote bag onto the beach; or perhaps a homeless scruffy, who has been huddling near a radiator, will leave the volume behind him when he finally goes, as if what his book said has no hold on his heart, because he cannot afford a card. Yet, like Columbus first espying land, each will have discovered what he or she cares about, will know at last what it is to love – a commonplace occurrence – for, in the library, such epiphanies, such enrichments of mind and changes of heart, are the stuff of every day.”
William H. Gass, “In Defense of the Book, On the enduring pleasures of paper, type, page and ink”
July 14, 2000