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

I am not a librarian of my own work. It's a good thing not to be involved with what you have done. — Mick Jagger

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

Librarians save lives: by handing the right book, at the right time, to a kid in need — Judy Blume

Why did you take this job?" I ask. "It doesn't make sense. You're so young - "
"It was an honor to be promoted," she says, but the words have a hollow ring. I can see her drawing back into herself, into her role.
"Who did you lose?" I ask.
Carmen flashes a smile that is at once dazzling and sad. "I'm a Librarian, Miss Bishop. I've lost everyone. — Victoria Schwab

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

I'm not bloody well going to have it, understand?" Vimes shouted, shaking the ape back and forth.
"Oook," the Librarian pointed out, patiently.
"What? Oh. Sorry." Vimes lowered the ape, who wisely didn't make an issue out of it because a man angry enough to lift 300 pounds of orangutan without noticing is a man with too much on his mind. — Terry Pratchett

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

Humph. Looking around for the sword, are you? Well, it's a better idea than thrashing around at random.'
'The Prince,' said Master Horace repressively, 'will inform us of his intentions when he wishes to do so. We are here to serve, not to quest
'
'Yes, it's the sword,' Edoran told her. — Hilari Bell

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

My mum was a children's librarian, so I spent a lot of time in the library. My reading life, because of my mum's work, was evenly split between American, Canadian, Australian and British authors. — Eleanor Catton

You cannot have a really terrific library without at least one terrific librarian, the way you cannot have a really terrific bedroom unless you can lock the door. — Lemony Snicket

There's something deep in the heart of every person that wants
to protect culture. The only thing about my pending career that
was changed because of 9/11 was that I began to see it was the community,
not the librarian, that was important to the library. Librarians
were only as important as the community they inspired. If I
was going to continue with this career, my job wouldn't be to protect
information, it would be to bring the community together and
inspire them to appreciate everything a library stands for. — Scott Douglas

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

Nick chided a censor, who wished some books gone, and suggested she scan Fahrenheit 451. For the book-budget cutters, Old Claus had no plan, cause if they could read, they just read Ayn Rand. — David Davis

The library was a great sprawling complex with rolls and rolls of paper tucked into many shelves. Between the reading rooms were courtyards with living fountains and singing birds and butterflies that would transform into handsome young women to guide or entertain anyone who stayed there any length of time. I saw one among the stacks, explaining an older style of calligraphy to the newly appointed Heavenly Marine Official of the South China Sea. In another wing, a librarian stepped from her chrysalis for the first time, reciting T'ang Dynasty poetry to the flowers. That's how I knew I was in the right section. — Larissa Lai

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

One function of the librarian, as he saw it, was to blunt the edge of these differences and to provide a means whereby the rich and poor could live happily side by side. The public library was a great leveler, supplying a literature by which the ordinary man could experience some of the pleasures of the rich, and providing a common ground where employer and employee could meet on equal terms. — Lewis Henry Steiner

I just finished my homework fast, I was bored to death. There wasn't 500 channels so there was a thing for a librarian to teach a kid like me about reading. I started reading early and I read all the time, because I love it. — Harvey Weinstein

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

When I get nervous, I go to the library and hang around. The libraries are filled with people who are nervous. You can blend in with them there. You're bound to see someone more nervous than you are in a library. Sometimes the librarians themselves are more nervous than you are. I'll probably be a librarian for that reason. Then if I'm nervous on the job, it won't show. I'll just stamp books and look things up for people and run back and forth to the staff room sneaking smokes until I get hold of myself. A library is a great place to hid. — M.E. Kerr

Everybody should have a librarian. — Beth Fantaskey

This should be a librarian's job, of course, but you can't trust people who read that much. — Anthony Marra

It was like walking into a treasure trove of books, hoarded by pirate librarians. — Pseudonymous Bosch

If books were girls and reading was s-ss-ssss-fucking, this would be the biggest whorehouse in the county and I'd be the most ruthless pimp you ever met. Whap the girls on the butts and send them off to their tricks as fast and often as I can. — Joe Hill

History shows that erections happen at the worst possible times, and they stick around until someone else notices them. Often, it is either a librarian or an English teacher, like Mrs. Edith Mitchell. — Andrew Smith

Google can bring you back 100,000 answers. A librarian can bring you back the right one. — Neil Gaiman

Authors also create lovable, friendly characters, then proceed to do terrible things to them, like throw them in unsightly librarian-controlled dungeons. This makes readers feel hurt and worried for the characters. The simple truth is that authors like making people squirm. If this weren't the case, all novels would be filled completely with cute bunnies having birthday parties. — Brandon Sanderson

Knowing I might never visit the archives again, I had hit on a solution to get at Mezzofanti's proficiency: I'd count the letters he received in each language. If he got many, he must have been writing a lot, and that, maybe, pointed to a great deal of practice, then to a high degree of proficiency. It was a fair social science hypothesis.
I told Pasti about my plan. The librarian smirked at me. "You're a positivist, I think," he said. A positivist is someone who believes you can get at truths only through what can be counted, measured, and observed. I was shocked - I've been called names before, but never that. — Michael Erard

A librarian remembers the particular scent of glue and dust, and if we're so lucky - and I was - the smell of parchment, a quiet tanginess, softer than wood pulp or cotton rag. We would bury ourselves in books until flesh and paper became one and ink and blood at last ran together. — Erika Swyler

Our librarian, Ms. Corbeil, is one of a kind. She welcomes all Social Outcasts and talks to us like we're adults and worthy of her attention, something many of us don't get very often. — Maya Van Wagenen

Darius blinked. "You're an accountant?" She looked more like a supermodel librarian. Not that he could tell her that. — Laura Oliva

He didn't get it - guys like that never flirted with men like him.
In spite of the fact he was a cop, which he liked to hope had given
him a little bit of visible macho cool after eight years on the job,
his sister still said his looks and style were "nerd meets librarian,"
which to him meant he was about as bland as they came. Not
exactly a balm to his ego. The man sprawled out in the chair over
his right shoulder, however, didn't have a bland bone in his comeon-
baby-you-know-you-want-to-fuck-me body. — M.L. Rhodes

If every punch, kick done by somebody female or male (it doesn't matter) or a curses said by one of this two sexes and every other thing which makes you feel that you aren't protected or you are heart. Was replacted with a book, that you don't receive a punch or kick, but a book you will be an a librarian! — Deyth Banger

I know that when I was a children's librarian, that was about 1940, boys particularly asked where were the books about kids like us, and there weren't any at that time. — Beverly Cleary

An even more pointed example of the the power of the silence tabu in libraries occurred in Duluth in 1981. The police were pursuing a fugitive from justice who ran into the public library. Uniformed police surrounded the building, and the library director was notified that only unobtrusive plainclothesmen were entering the building. Their instructions: "When you find him, overpower him. Quietly." It was done, and only a few people in the crowded building saw a handcuffed man being ushered past the checkout counter. "See," one librarian remarked quietly to an amazed person, "that's what happens when you don't pay your book fines. — Ray B. Browne

At this time on a weekday morning, the library was refuge to the retired, the unemployed, and the unemployable ... 'I'm not always this gabby,' the librarian said. 'It's just so nice to talk to someone who isn't constructing a conspiracy theory or watching videos of home accidents on YouTube. — Myla Goldberg

Why do prostitutes when they get straight always try and get so prim? It's like long-repressed librarian-ambitions come flooding out. — David Foster Wallace

In order to be really good as a librarian, everything counts towards your work, every play you go see, every concert you hear, every trip you take, everything you read, everything you know. I don't know of another occupation like that. The more you know, the better you're going to be. — Allen Smith

I was just turned last week. I'm a librarian."
He stilled, as if I'd just told him I was the inventor of the tube top. "I watched a movie about a librarian once. Well, she was a librarian by day, a call girl by
"
I stopped him with a quick lift of an eyebrow. "If you finish that sentence, we cannot be friends. — Molly Harper

I've always loved children. When I was working with children as a librarian, I loved being with them and working around them. — Laura Bush

I became a librarian at the Sainte-Genevieve Library in Paris. I made this gesture to rid myself of a certain milieu, a certain attitude, to have a clean conscience, but also to make a living. I was twenty-five. I had been told that one must make a living, and I believed it. — Marcel Duchamp

Got it," I say as he hands me a pencil skirt, a crisp long-sleeved white shirt, and some low black heels. "This is what I'm wearing?" I'm a librarian. "Can I safely assume the accessories will include glasses on a chain and my hair in a bun? Should I shush people tonight? — J.A. Huss

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

My mother was a children's librarian. I remember when traditional stories were revised for modern audiences until they bore only a nodding acquaintance with the originals, but were released as 'authentic Indian stories' when they were, in fact, nothing of the kind. — Patricia Briggs

I got that familiar mania - there is information somewhere here, and I can find it, I have to. A good librarian is not so different from a prospector, her whole brain a divining rod. She walks to books and stands and wonders: here? Is the answer here? The same blind faith in finding, even when hopeless. If someone caught me when I was in the throes of tracking something elusive, I would have told them: but it's out there. I can feel it. — Elizabeth McCracken

I'm a librarian, not an oracle. — Libba Bray

The more freely a librarian mingles with readers, and the greater the amount of assistance he renders them, the more intense does the conviction of citizens become, that the library is a useful institution, and the more willing do they grow to grant money in larger and larger sums to be used in buying books and employing additional assistants. — Samuel Green

Really, being a librarian is a much more dangerous job than you realize. — Libba Bray

Being a writer in a library is rather like being a eunuch in a harem. — John Braine

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

I thought research would be more glamorous, somehow. I'd give the librarian a secret code word and he'd give me the one book I needed and whisper the necessary page numbers. Like a speakeasy. With books. — Libba Bray

The name America has definitely grown on me. I wish there was a big patriotic story behind it, but the truth is that my grandfather was a librarian who knew all sorts of random facts. — America Ferrera

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Librarian: 'Okay.'

'--'

Librarian: '--'

'--'

Librarian: 'Enjoy your day! — Gina Sheridan

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

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

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

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

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

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

The library is a place of mental diversion, learning, and comfort for anyone who has an intellect. I know of no librarian who when asked for food for the mind will offer a stone. What more could anyone ask? — Piers Anthony

even the required Smart Librarian glasses. — Rachel Caine

Thanks for being the kind of person who likes to pick up a book. That's a genuinely great thing. I met a librarian recently who said she doesn't read because books are her job and when she goes home, she just wants to switch off. I think we can agree that that's creepy as hell. — Max Barry

Big fat hairy monkey, hands a couple of octaves wide? — Terry Pratchett

If you want to be a reference librarian, you must learn to overcome not only your shyness but also the shyness of others! — S.R. Ranganathan

I finally found my way to the Really Restricted Section, where they keep the kind of books most scholars aren't even supposed to know exist. I knocked on the closed door, said the proper passwords, and the door opened before me. I walked in, and the ghost of the Head Librarian, a thin, dusty presence, with dark eyes and a disapproving look, appeared before me, blocking my way. (He had been eaten by a book, then brought back by the other books, apparently because they approved of him. Because even though he didn't have much time for people, he loved books.) — Simon R. Green

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

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

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

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

A librarian can't live by books alone, and I wouldn't eat them if I could. Feel too much like cannibalism. — Mike Mullin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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