Quotes & Sayings About Librarians

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

The librarians were mysterious. It was said they could tell what book you needed just by looking at you, and they could take your voice away with a word. — Terry Pratchett

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

Libraries are like houses of worship: Whether or not you use them yourself, it's important to know that they are there. In many ways they define a society and the values of that society. Librarians to me are the keepers of the flame of knowledge. When I was growing up, the librarian in my local library looked like a meek little old lady, but after you spent some time with her, you realized she was Athena with a sword, a wise and wonderful repository of wisdom. — Jane Stanton Hitchcock

School librarians play such an enormous role in bringing children to books they are going to enjoy. It's a magic alchemy when that works. — Chris Riddell

You don't have to become an investment banker as a way of demonstrating that education has worked for you. But librarians have to believe in the values of high culture. Not just high culture but middle culture, low culture, kinds of exciting eye-catching crap of all kinds. Everyone needs that. — Francis Spufford

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

What I tend to get from America is very enthusiastic letters and e-mail from librarians and schoolteachers, the gatekeepers, though I hesitate to use that word. I've never been a huge seller. — Kate Thompson

Book burning is a charming old custom, hallowed by antiquity. It has been practiced for centuries by fascists, communists, atheists, school children, rival authors, and tired librarians. Like everything of importance since the invention of the cloak and the shroud, its origins are cloaked in mystery and shrouded in secrecy. Some scholars believe that the first instance of book burning occurred in the Middle Ages, when a monk was trying to illuminate a manuscript. All agree that book burning was almost non-existent during the period when books were made of stone. — Richard Armour

Teachers and librarians are some of my favorite people, especially since I was a teacher myself. I love talking to them because they have wonderful ideas about how to share books, and especially about how to share my books with kids. — Rick Riordan

Librarians are teaching the next generation how to use digital media responsibly. — Jarrett J. Krosoczka

Library Science is the key to all science, just as mathematics is its language - and civilization will rise or fall, depending on how well librarians do their jobs. — Robert A. Heinlein

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

TO ALL THE
ambulance drivers
firewatchers
air-raid wardens
nurses
canteen workers
airplane spotters
rescue workers
mathematicians
vicars
vergers
shopgirls
chorus girls
librarians
debutantes
spinsters
fishermen
retired sailors
servants
evacuees
Shakespearean actors
and mystery novelists
WHO WON THE WAR. — Connie Willis

When I tell people I went to library school, the most common reaction is either "You're joking, right?" or "They have schools for librarians? Do they teach you how to properly sssh people? — Scott Douglas

Librarians ... have been my lifelong friends, guides and heroes. — Joseph Bruchac

People don't read anymore. And, when they do, they don't read books like this one, but instead read books that depress them, because those books are seen as important. Somehow, the Librarians have successfully managed to convince most people in the Hushlands that they shouldn't read anything that isn't boring.
It comes down to Biblioden the Scrivener's great vision for the world - a vision in which people never do anything abnormal, never dream, and never experience anything strange. His minions teach people to stop reading fun books, and instead focus on fantasy novels. That's what I call them, because these books keep people trapped. Keep them inside the nice little fantasy that they consider to be the 'real' world. A fantasy that tells them they don't need to try something new.
After all, trying new things can be difficult. — Brandon Sanderson

The reading area was a beautifully crafted trap set by the librarians, but it was too perfect. Even the dumbest book lover - and anyone who would regularly choose to come in contact with books could not be a bright bulb, Jackie thought - wouldn't fall for this. — Joseph Fink

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

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

Six: everyone - and when I say everyone, I mean absolutely,positively everyone, from the librarians to the students to the staff to the oldest, cruiser janitor - was piss-down-their-legs scared of Miles Richter.
Of all the crazy things I heard about East Shoal, that was the only thing I couldn't believe. — Francesca Zappia

Everybody should have a librarian. — Beth Fantaskey

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

Colorful posters with appealing statements like "Get into a good book this summer" and "We are going to force you into a good book this summer" and "You are going to get inside this book and we are going to close it on you and there is nothing you can do about it" have appeared overnight around the library entrance and in local shops and businesses... — Joseph Fink

If past history was all that is needed to play the game of money, the richest people would be librarians. — Warren Buffett

But put two librarians' heads together, and mountains move. — Richard Peck

People become librarians because they know too much. Their knowledge
extends beyond mere categories. They cannot be confined to disciplines.
They bring order to chaos. They bring wisdom and culture to the masses.
Librarians rule. And they will kick the crap out of anyone who says
otherwise. — Erica Olsen

Librarians understand about power - they know how to find anything. — Joan Bauer

Librarians are essential players in the information revolution because they level that field. They enable those without money or education to read and learn the same things as the billionaire and the PhD. — Marilyn Johnson

The most successful students are those who know that they can do better than grasp at the closest source of information. Reference librarians, who spend their days learning what is available in a broad range of fields and how to search for it, provide a great service for students and other library patrons. — John Palfrey

The women in my life have all been librarians, English teachers, or booksellers. If they couldn't speak pidgin Tolstoy, articulate Henry James, or give me directions to Usher and Ox, it was no go. I have always longed for education, and pillow talk's the best. — Ray Bradbury

So, there I was, tied to an altar made from outdated encyclopedias, about to get sacrificed to the dark powers by a cult of evil Librarians. — Brandon Sanderson

The brass ball spun furiously round his pole. "Ooh, I'll bet you scribble in the margins, don't you? You fiend! You devil! I can see it in your beady little non-spectacled eyes! You're just the type of monster who uses an innocent book to prop open a door or straighten a table with a wobbly leg. Or maybe you only read magazines? Savage!"
"Oh, get off yourself," barked Blunderbuss. "I've eaten more books than you've shelved in your whole weird pinball life and I enjoyed every last one, thanks very much."
"EATEN?!" screeched the brass ball. — Catherynne M Valente

Rare-book people have this in common with poets: they too are born, not made. — E. Millicent Sowerby

The world is full of disappointment," I said.
"Yes," she said, "I heard him say that. And every creature is simply trying to get what it wants, and to make their way through a difficult world. Do you believe that?"
"No," I said. "There's more than that."
"Like what?"
"Like good books," I said, "and good people. And good librarians, who are almost both at once. — Lemony Snicket

As adults we choose our own reading material. Depending on our moods and needs we might read the newspaper, a blockbuster novel, an academic article, a women's magazine, a comic, a children's book, or the latest book that just about everyone is reading. No one chastises us for our choice. No one says, 'That's too short for you to read.' No one says, 'That's too easy for you, put it back.' No one says 'You couldn't read that if you tried
it's much too difficult.'
Yet if we take a peek into classrooms, libraries, and bookshops we will notice that children's choices are often mocked, censured, and denied as valid by idiotic, interfering teachers, librarians, and parents. Choice is a personal matter that changes with experience, changes with mood, and changes with need. We should let it be. — Mem Fox

The librarians know the secrets, not the historians — Dee Brown

But then twitching nervously in the presence of a librarian wasn't an uncommon response - librarians, like ministers of religion, and poets, and people with serious mental health disorders, can make people nervous. Librarians possess a kind of occult power, an aura. They could silence people with just a glance. At least, they did in Israel's fantasies. In Israel's fantasies, librarians were mild-mannered superheroes, with extrasensory perceptions and a highly developed sense of responsibility who demanded respect from everyone they met. In reality, Israel couldn't silence even Mrs Onions on her mobile phone when she was disturbing other readers. — Ian Sansom

So the librarians at UCLA worked very hard to find another copy of Villacorta's rendition of the Dresden Codex, and lent it to me. — Richard Feynman

Now here's the heavy irony. So I went back to New York to become a librarian. To actually seek out this thing I've been fleeing all my life. and (here it comes): a librarian is just not that easy to become ... Apparently there's a whole filing system and annotating system and stamping system and God knows what you have to learn before you qualify. — Elaine Dundy

Librarians who are arguing and lobbying for clever e-book lending solutions are completely missing the point. They are defending the library-as-warehouse concept, as opposed to fighting for the future, which is librarian as producer, concierge, connector, teacher, and impresario. — Seth Godin

This much is already known: for every sensible line of straightforward statement, there are leagues of senseless cacophonies, verbal jumbles and incoherences. (I know of an uncouth region whose librarians repudiate the vain and superstitious custom of finding a meaning in books and equate it with that of finding a meaning in dreams or in the chaotic lines of one's palm ... They admit that the inventors of this writing imitated the twenty-five natural symbols, but maintain that this application is accidental and that the books signify nothing in themselves. This dictum, we shall see, is not entirely fallacious.) — Jorge Luis Borges

Creating a world within the imagination one day at a time through words and colors. — Peggy A. Borel

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

Librarians...put their hearts and minds into preserving knowledge and making it available to all. They help to keep the wheels of truth, discovery and imagination turning." - L.J.M. Owen — L.J.M. Owen

Like the librarians of Babel in Borges's story, who are looking for the book that will provide them with the key to all the others, we oscillate between the illusion of perfection and the vertigo of the unattainable. In the name of completeness, we would like to believe that a unique order exists that would enable us to accede in knowledge all in one go; in the name of the unattainable, we would like to think that order and disorder are in fact the same word, denoting pure chance.
It's possible also that both are decoys, illusions intended to disguise the erosion of both books and systems. It is no bad thing in any case that between the two our bookshelves should serve from time to time as joggers of the memory, as cat-rests and as lumber-rooms. — Georges Perec

Don't mark up the Library's copy, you fool! Librarians are Unprankable. They'll track you down! They have skills! — Charles Ogden

The librarians that I've spoken to, the teachers and the librarians who really care and do advise parents and children of what's good and what's out there, they are very special. They have a kind of wisdom that a lot of people don't have. — Julie Andrews

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

your librarians go into battle?" "When they must," said Lirael. "The Library is very old, and deep, and contains many things that have been put away for good reason. Creatures, dangerous knowledge, artifacts made not wisely, but too well . . . books that should not be opened without proper preparation, some books that should never be opened at all." "Creatures? — Garth Nix

Adult librarians are like lazy bakers: their patrons want a jelly doughnut, so they give them a jelly doughnut. Children's librarians are ambitious bakers: 'You like the jelly doughnut? I'll get you a jelly doughnut. But you should try my cruller, too. My cruller is gonna blow your mind, kid. — John Green

Why was it librarians had such a prim image? With all the information available in books right there at their fingertips, librarians could be the best-informed people around. About anything. — Charlaine Harris

Isn't it what all librarians strive toward, at least in the movies and cliches? Silence, invisibility, nothing but a rambling cloud of old book dust. — Rebecca Makkai

Glam culture is ultimately rooted in obsession, and those of us who are truly devoted and loyal to the lifestyle of glamour are masters of its history. Or, to put it more elegantly, we are librarians. — Lady Gaga

...killing rats wasn't in my job description. — Scott Douglas

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

Words of wisdom, the meaning of life, p e r h a p s even the
answer sought by Borges's librarians - all of these may wash over us every day, but they can do little
for us unless we savor them, engage with them, question them, improve them, and connect them to our
lives — Jonathan Haidt

It's an essential fight librarians are making, an age-old fight; yours is a battle for civilization. It's a fight for our country's founding values. — Jim Hightower

Some libraries are no longer called libraries but are known as Learning Resource Centers or Media Centers. Librarians, however, are still generally known as librarians and not yet as Learning Resourcists or Media Centerists, though this may be only a matter of time. — Richard Armour

Librarians in America do something like a couple of billion dollars worth of book business every year. — Michael Moore

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

A storm of yellow notepads, broken pencils, papers, and books littered the tables and floor of the room, along with a collection of empty beer cans. It looked as if a party of wild librarians had just cleared out. — Erika Robuck

He told me that archivists and librarians were opposite personas. True librarians are unsentimental. They're pragmatic, concerned with the newest, cleanest, most popular books. Archivists, on the other hand, are only peripherally interested in what other people like, and much prefer the rare to the useful. — Avi Steinberg

Librarians know books, we live books, we breathe books, we are books. — Jenny Levine

But the player librarians all over the country were raving about most was Marjory Muldauer from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. A gangly seventh grader, a foot taller than any of her competitors, Marjory Muldauer had memorized the ten categories of the Dewey decimal system before she entered preschool. — Chris Grabenstein

Librarians as a race tend to be tedious. — Peter Shaffer

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

It's funny that we think of libraries as quiet demure places where we are shushed by dusty, bun-balancing, bespectacled women. The truth is libraries are raucous clubhouses for free speech, controversy and community. Librarians have stood up to the Patriot Act, sat down with noisy toddlers and reached out to illiterate adults. Libraries can never be shushed. — Paula Poundstone

When I run the world, librarians will be exempt from tragedy. Even their smaller sorrows will last only for as long as you can take out a book. — Karen Joy Fowler

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

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

Which was complimentary but unhelpful, because the librarians were tough. — Robertson Davies

Poor little librarians of the world, those girls, secretly lovely, their looks marred forever by the cruelty of a pair of big dark eyeglasses! — Michael Chabon

In fact a few simple mathematical calculations reveal that if reference librarians were paid at market rates for all the roles they play, they would have salaries well over $200,000. — Will Manley

Librarians are amazing like that. They will hand you a book they know will make your eyes bug out because they know that is the point of novels, not to satisfy but to surprise. — Max Barry

Please don't worry. It's a psychological complaint, common amongst ex-librarians. You see, she thinks she's a coffee table edition ... — Alan Moore

it seemed there was no place for librarians anymore. — Jenny Colgan

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

Dad claims that library science is the foundation of all sciences just
as math is the key
and we will survive or founder, depending on how
well the librarians do their jobs. Librarians didn't look glamorous to
me but maybe Dad had hit on a not very obvious truth. — Robert A. Heinlein

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

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

Librarians and romance writers accomplish one mission better than anyone, including English teachers: we create readers for life - and what could be more fulfilling than that? — Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Monotonous and thankless as her job can be sometimes, she cheers at the thought of her coworkers - a dozen of them crammed into their little offices in the basement - all cleverly disguised as harmless geeks, all capable of saving the world if called upon. — Alexis M. Smith

Someone has said of books that they are our 'amplest heritages' of thought, and so they are. That doesn't necessarily mean that they must be learned or profound. They are food for the mind and different minds require different foods ; everyone is better for variety. Whatever stimulates the mind feeds it, be it fact, fiction or fable. That is where our responsibility lies ; in knowing what builds good mental blood and brawn, and in dispensing that only. Don't ever let yourself think you haven't time to read. — Mary Virginia Provines

I grew up a middle class, colonized child of teachers and librarians and people, women especially, who treasured education. — Lorraine Toussaint

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

I wish there could be an international peace
conference of booksellers, for (you will smile at this) my own
conviction is that the future happiness of the world depends in no
small measure on them and on the librarians. — Christopher Morley

What would we do without our elders? Grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles? They're the libraries and archives of our lives and society. Librarians and archives, like elders, reaffirm our sense of being, our purpose, and help inform who we are and how we interact within society. Who would we be to not take pride in them and take the time to make them as wonderful as possible? Rachel E. Winston — Kyle Cassidy

I love librarians more than any other people in the world. When I was an immigrant kid, they've made me feel like a human being and they gave me books that taught me English. — Gary Shteyngart

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

CHAPTER 10: For questions about librarians featured in erotic literature, you will find absolutely nothing in the public library. — Josephine Carr

Librarians! Librarians always know how to find out things. That was their job even before the Internet. — Susan Beth Pfeffer

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

We need to write books that publicists and marketers and booksellers and book club leaders and librarians and readers can get excited about. That have something about them that makes them stand out. That makes them shine. — M.J. Rose

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

I wished I could take her to the library and hand her over to the librarians. Please teach her about everything, I'd say. — A.S. King

A good deal of time spent researching this book might well have been wasted and valuable opportunities missed if it had not been for the help and suggestions of archivists and librarians. — Antony Beevor

With 'A Northern Light,' I've already heard from teenage readers, teachers, librarians - it's been so gratifying. It's amazing that you can take something that matters so deeply to you and make it matter to someone else. — Jennifer Donnelly