Best Librarian Quotes & Sayings

A book has been taken. A book has been taken? You summoned the Watch," Carrot drew himself up proudly, "because someone's taken a book? You think that's worse than murder?"
The Librarian gave him the kind of look other people would reserve for people who said things like "What's so bad about genocide? — Terry Pratchett

She was brilliant and joyous and she believed- probably correctly- that libraries contain the answers to all things, to everything, and that if you can't find the information you seek in the library, then such information probably doesn't exist in this or any parallel universe now or ever to be known. She was thoughtful and kind and she always believed the best of everybody. She was, above all else, a master librarian and she knew where to find any book on any subject in the shortest possible time.
And she was wonderfully unhinged. — Gary Paulsen

Ravna became a librarian. "The ultimate dilettante!" Lynne had teased. — Vernor Vinge

My mother was a medical records librarian and wonderful with us girls. She sewed a lot of our clothes - really glamorous, beautiful clothes - and I think that's part of why I was so successful when I went off to Paris; she'd made me all these wonderful clothes to take. — Jerry Hall

No one looks too closely at a librarian. People are afraid of going blind from the glare of ssss-ssso much compressed wisdom. — Joe Hill

So you," she said, meeting his eyes, "are a librarian. What does that make me then? A seven-day loan?"
Daniel laughed as he set his book aside. He moved toward her and lightly gripped her knees.
"Seven-day loan ... I'm not sure I like the thought of giving you back." He slid his hands up her thighs and took her by the hips.
"But what about overdue fines?" she asked, playfully flashing her eyes at him.
"I think I can afford them," he said. Eleanor tried to voice another protest but his mouth was already on hers. — Tiffany Reisz

I shall tell you what I believe. I believe God is a librarian. I believe that literature is holy ... it is that best part of our souls that we break off and give each other, and God has a special dispensation for it, angels to guard its making and its preservation. — Sarah Smith

Even now, she wished she could write a note, push it across the table, and go away to her room. But she was no longer a Second Assistant Librarian of the Great Library of the Clayr. Those days were gone, vanished with everything else that had defined her previous existence and identity. — Garth Nix

Boy, this is your lucky day!" She clapped her hands. "You found yourself a librarian! I can help wit the figuring-out thing and point you toward some good poetry while I'm at it. It's what I do. — Joe Hill

I started getting Twitter followers after I started doing press for 'Fargo.' One of my best friends from college is a librarian, and she started tracking after each interview how many Twitter followers I got. She and her librarian friends were like, 'We're going to make a graph.' And I was like, 'Alright, nerds.' — Allison Tolman

When I go to a library and I see the librarian at her desk reading, I'm afraid to interrupt her, even though she sits there specifically so that she may be interrupted, even though being interrupted for reasons like this by people like me is her very job. — Aaron Swartz

An evil librarian is taking over the school. He appears to be making my best friend his special evil library monitor. — Michelle Knudsen

To be a librarian is not to be neutral, or passive, or waiting for a question. It is to be a radical positive change agent within your community. — R. David Lankes

If television's a babysitter, the Internet is a drunk librarian who won't shut up. — Dorothy Gambrell

My parents, grandmother and brother were teachers. My mother taught Latin and French and was the school librarian. My father taught geography and a popular class called Family Living, the precursor to Sociology, which he eventually taught. My grandmother was a beloved one-room school teacher at Knob School, near Sonora in Larue County, Ky. — Sam Abell

She was no longer a shy Second Assistant Librarian. She was the Abhorsen-in-Waiting. — Garth Nix

I am a librarian. I discovered me in the library. I went to find me in the library. Before I fell in love with libraries, I was just a six-year-old boy. The library fueled all of my curiosities, from dinosaurs to ancient Egypt. When I graduated from high school in 1938, I began going to the library three nights a week. I did this every week for almost ten years and finally, in 1947, around the time I got married, I figured I was done. So I graduated from the library when I was twenty-seven. I discovered that the library is the real school. — Ray Bradbury

Why ride a cowboy when you can ride a librarian? — Alice Clayton

Here, then, is the point at which I see the new mission of the librarian rise up incomparably higher than all those preceding. Up until the present, the librarian has been principally occupied with the book as a thing, as a material object. From now on he must give his attention to the book as a living function. He must become a policeman, master of the raging book. — Jose Ortega Y Gasset

First, her father had a minor stroke, giving Claire a glimpse of his mortality and, by extension, her own. And then she had a vision of herself thirty years in the future: a spinster librarian in an apartment full of cats named after New Wave directors. (Godard, leave Rivette's chew toy alone - ) — Jess Walter

It's a mistake to lie to a librarian, you know. Some people assume we're shy and gullible, but we know how to dig up the dirt. — Virginia Lowell

Librarians' values are as sound as Girl Scouts': truth, free speech, and universal literacy. And, like Scouts, they possess a quality that I think makes librarians invaluable and indispensable: they want to help. They want to help us. They want to be of service. And they're not trying to sell us anything. — Marilyn Johnson

No one ever spoke above a whisper in the staff lounge, but I felt the need to shush her anyway. I gave her my best librarian frown and put one finger to my lips. It works every time. We librarians are like practitioners of Jedi mind-control when it comes to shushing. — Nick Pageant

Being a good, innovative librarian means taking a humanistic stance toward policy, decision-making, and experimentation. It means focusing on the heart. — Michael Stephens

A library is a place to go for a reality check, a bracing dose of literature, or a "true reflection of our history," whether it's a brick-and-mortar building constructed a century ago or a fanciful arrangement of computer codes. The librarian is the organizer, the animating spirit behind it, and the navigator. Her job is to create order out of the confusion of the past, even as she enables us to blast into the future. — Marilyn Johnson

HEADMASTER: I was a geographer. I went to Hull.
IRWIN: Oh. Larkin.
HEADMASTER: Everybody says that. 'Hull? Oh, Larkin.' I don't know about the poetry ... as I say, I was a geographer ... but as a librarian he was pitiless. The Himmler of the Accessions Desk. And now, we're told, women in droves.
Art. They get away with murder. — Alan Bennett

He helped the Librarian up. There was a red glow in the ape's eyes. It had tried to steal his books. This was probably the best proof any wizard could require that the trolleys were brainless. — Terry Pratchett

The Librarian liked being best man. You were allowed to kiss bridesmaids, and they weren't allowed to run away. — Terry Pratchett

As a child, my number one best friend was the librarian in my grade school. I actually believed all those books belonged to her. — Erma Bombeck

The Librarian was, of course, very much in favor of reading in general, but readers in particular got on his nerves. There was something, well, sacrilegious about the way they kept taking books off the shelves and wearing out the words by reading them. He liked people who loved and respected books, and the best way to do that, in the Librarian's opinion, was to leave them on the shelves where Nature intended them to be. The — Terry Pratchett

Listen to me, Bill," Richard said. "Let the librarian be your new best friend. If you like what she's given you to read, trust her. The library, the theater, a passion for novels and plays - well, Bill, this could be the door to your future. At your age, I lived in a library! Now novels and plays are my life. — John Irving

The Librarian considered matters for a while. So ... a dwarf and a troll. He preferred both species to humans. For one thing, neither of them were great readers. The Librarian was, of course, very much in favor of reading in general, but readers in particular got on his nerves. There was something, well, sacrilegious about the way they kept taking books off the shelves and wearing out the words by reading them. He liked people who loved and respected books, and the best way to do that, in the Librarian's opinion, was to leave them on the shelves where Nature intended them to be. — Terry Pratchett

Nutt was technically an expert on love poetry throughout the ages and had discussed it at length with Miss Healstether, the castle librarian. He had also tried to discuss it with Ladyship, but she had laughed and said it was frivolity, although quite helpful as a tutorial on the use of vocabulary, scansion, rhythm and affect as a means to an end, to wit getting a young lady to take all her clothes off. At that particular point, Nutt had not really understood what she meant. It sounded like some sort of conjuring trick. — Terry Pratchett

The Librarian swung on. It was slow progress, because there were things he wasn't keen on meeting. Creatures evolved to fill every niche in the environment, and some of those in the dusty immensity of L-space were best avoided. They were much more unusual than ordinary unusual creatures.
Usually he could forewarn himself by keeping a careful eye on the kickstool crabs that grazed harmlessly on the dust. When they were spooked, it was time to hide. Several times he had to flatten himself against the shelves as a thesaurus thundered by. He waited patiently as a herd of Critters crawled past, grazing on the contents of the choicer books and leaving behind them piles of small literary criticism. And there were other things, things which he hurried away from and tried not to look hard at ...
And you had to avoid cliches at all costs. — Terry Pratchett

[I]n spite of her work as a reference librarian, she discovered that life isn't about knowing all the answers. The best we can do is make peace with our questions, learn who we are, know our strengths, and do the best we can with the gifts we've been given while we're here. — Kate Messner

I became interested in librarians while researching my first book, about obituaries. With the exception of a few showy eccentrics, like the former soldier in Hitler's army who had a sex change and took up professional whistling, the most engaging obit subjects were librarians. An obituary of a librarian could be about anything under the sun, a woman with a phenomenal memory, who recalled the books her aging patrons read as children - and was also, incidentally, the best sailor on her stretch of the Maine coast - or a man obsessed with maps, who helped automate the Library of Congress's map catalog and paved the way for wonders like Google Maps. — Marilyn Johnson

The mind's cross indexing puts the best librarian to shame. — Sharon Begley

A warning: If you rip, tear, shred, bend, fold, deface, disfigure, smear, smudge, throw, drop, or in any other manner damage, mistreat, or show lack of respect towards this book, the consequences will be as awful as it is within my power to make them. - Irma Pince, Hogwarts Librarian — Rowling J K

She was an ordinary librarian, innocent of any crime, but one day she fell into a giant paint box and has been on the run from the fashion police ever since ... — Helen Oyeyemi

I refuse to use the computers if Google is on them.'

Librarian: 'Okay.'

'--'

Librarian: '--'

'--'

Librarian: 'Enjoy your day! — Gina Sheridan

When someone gives me either a democratic or republican pamphlet, I throw it in their face. I'm a librarian, damn it! We only take book donations. — Bauvard

It was like when you're a little kid and you run into your teacher or librarian at the grocery store or Wal-mart and it's just so startling, because it never occurred to you they existed outside of school. — Sarah Dessen

The only items she approved of in my wardrobe were my shoes. In fact, she borrowed a pair of orange faux-crocodile leather wedge heals with a turquoise bow at the toe. I wore a zebra printed spiked heal; the rest of my outfit came from her closet. She said I owned the clothes of a radiologist and the shoes of an OBGYN; which is like the medical doctor equivalent of saying that I dressed like a librarian with a propensity for fuckmeboots. — Penny Reid

The librarian was explaining the benefits of the Dewey decimal system to her junior - benefits that extended to every area of life. It was orderly, like the universe. It had logic. It was dependable. Using it allowed a kind of moral uplift, as one's own chaos was also brought under control.
'Whenever I am troubled,' said the librarian, 'I think about the Dewey decimal system.'
'Then what happens?' asked the junior, rather overawed.
'Then I understand that trouble is just something that has been filed in the wrong place. That is what Jung was explaining of course - as the chaos of our unconscious contents strive to find their rightful place in the index of consciousness. — Jeanette Winterson

Now ... get Thoth a raspberry chocolate latte with the cream and chocolate sprinkles! Thoth commands, librarian! Obey! Sprinkles! THOTH HAS SPOKEN! — James Turner

The secret of a good librarian is that he never reads anything more of the literature in his charge than the title and the table of contents. Anyone who lets himself go and starts reading a book is lost as a librarian ... He's bound to lose perspective. — Robert Musil

How many books do you have here?" Corliss asked. "Two million, one hundred thousand, and eleven," the librarian said proudly, but Corliss was frightened. What happens to the world when that many books go unread? And what happens to the unread authors of those unread books? — Sherman Alexie

It was immediately clear that the book had been undisturbed for a very long time, perhaps even since it had been laid to rest. The librarian fetched a checked duster, and wiped away the dust, a black, thick, tenacious Victorian dust, a dust composed of smoke and fog particles accumulated before the Clean Air acts. — A.S. Byatt

My first favourite book was 'Are You My Mother?' A picture book about a lost bird. After that my favourites changed almost yearly. I loved everything by Roald Dahl, but my favourite was probably 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.' A librarian gave me a first edition of that book, which I treasure. — Rick Yancey

To him it was a sort of hyperspace-librarian, girl-geek thing that he found clever and fetching without attracting him in a way that would have been creepy. — Neal Stephenson

I'm a born librarian with a sex drive — David Bowie

The first purpose of a librarian is to preserve and defend our books. Sometimes, that means dying for them - or making someone else die for them. Tota est scientia. — Rachel Caine

Librarian like Stewardess, Certified Public Accountant, Used Car Salesman is one of those occupations that people assume attract a certain deformed personality. — Elizabeth McCracken

This is why it's perilous to ignore a librarian. — Jeffe Kennedy

Children know that if they have a question about the world, the library is the place to find the answer. And someone will always be there to help them find the answer-our librarians. (A librarian's) job is an important one. Our nation runs on the fuel of information and imagination that libraries provide. And they are in charge of collecting and sharing this information in a helpful way. Librarians inform the public, and by doing so, they strengthen our great democracy. — Laura Bush

When, sometime around my fortieth birthday, I was struck by the urge to try to write a novel, I was vastly comforted to learn that Rex Stout didn't write his first Nero Wolfe tale until he was forty-seven, and that he proceeded to write them right up to his death at the age of eighty-eight. It was considerably less comforting to learn that he typically completed a novel in thirty-eight days, and that he always got it right on the first try. P. G. Wodehouse once said, "Stout's supreme triumph was the creation of Archie Goodwin." That's how I've always felt about it, too. When I returned those first Rex Stout books to my librarian, I said to her, "Do you have any more of these Archie Goodwin stories?" She smiled, I recall, and said, "Why, yes. Dozens. — Rex Stout

What does she look like?"
"Glasses," I said. "Snobbish face. Usually has her hair in a bun."
"The glasses," Grandpa Smedry said slowly. "Did they have ... horn rims?" "Usually." "Hyperventilating Hobbs!" he exclaimed. "A Librarian! Quickly, lad, we have to go! Get dressed; I'll go steal some food from your foster parents! — Brandon Sanderson

I'd go to the library so I could sit in a big, quiet room and listen to pages being turned. There was a boring librarian who everyone in fifth grade hated. But I loved her because when she would read us stories in her soft voice, she'd turn my head into a snow globe. — Andrea Seigel

Lady, I've trained for months. I've taken down your helicopters with only a slingshot. I've looked a librarian right in the area where most creatures would have eyes. You. Do. Not. Scare me. — Joseph Fink

Pulverized by literature,' thought Miss Laburnum. 'The ideal way for a librarian to die. — Margaret Mahy

In the general fiction section Ava discovered a well-thumbed edition of the latest bestseller. One million copies sold! Pah again! She cracked the book open at the spine, knew just where the join was weakest. She laid it open like a sacrificial goat on the carped, hidden between the shelves of books. Then she unleashed her machete, samurai-warrior style, and raising it above her head brought it down, and cleaved the book in twain, splitting it down the middle like a coconut. And that was when, seeing the scimitar rise again, the librarian screamed. — Mark O'Flynn

Vampire Kellan Barstow is tired of watching his best friend Lucas Phillips pine after his one true mate. Though he's jealous that Lucas found his before he found his own, he wants him to be happy and hopes to spur him on to make a move toward his chosen human, librarian Emily Yost. But Kellan's sick of Lucas's moping and decides one thing will convince Luke he needs to act. Sleeping with another woman. — Pippa DaCosta