Librarian Quotes

1. "Librarians who are arguing and lobbying for clever ebook lending solutions are completely missing the point. They are defending library as warehouse as opposed to fighting for the future, which is librarian as producer, concierge, connector, teacher and impresario."
Author: Alan Bennett

2. "In stories, when someone behaves uncharacteristically, we take it as a meaningful, even pivotal moment. If we are surprised again and again, we have to keep changing our minds, or give up and disbelieve the writer. In real life, if people think they know you well enough not only to say, 'It's Tuesday, Amy must be helping out at the library today,' but well enough to say to the librarian, after you've left the building, 'You know, Amy just loves reading to the four-year-olds, I think it's been such a comfort for her since her little boy died'—if they know you like that, you can do almost anything where they can't see you, and when they hear about it, they will, as we do, simply disbelieve the narrator."
Author: Amy Bloom

3. "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."
Author: Antony Beevor

4. "Goat curry and a female librarian, that's what I'm in the mood for."
Author: Ben Katchor

5. "She loved the library and was anxious to worship the lady in charge. But the librarian had other things on her mind. She hated children anyhow."
Author: Betty Smith

6. "The old man was peering intently at the shelves. 'I'll have to admit that he's a very competent scholar.'Isn't he just a librarian?' Garion asked, 'somebody who looks after books?'That's where all the rest of scholarship starts, Garion. All the books in the world won't help you if they're just piled up in a heap."
Author: David Eddings

7. "Librarians, Dusty, possess a vast store of politeness. These are people who get asked regularly the dumbest questions on God's green earth. These people tolerate every kind of crank and eccentric and mouth breather there is."
Author: Garrison Keillor

8. "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."
Author: Garth Nix

9. "...I am still librarian in your house, for I never was dismissed, and never gave up the office. Now I am librarian here as well.''But you have just told me you were sexton here!''So I am. It is much the same profession. Except you are a true sexton, books are but dead bodies to you, and a library nothing but a catacomb!"
Author: George MacDonald

10. "Madam Pince, our librarian, tells me that it is 'pawed about, dribbled on, and generally maltreated' nearly everyday - a high compliment for any book."
Author: J.K. Rowling

11. "Since at least the Sixth Century all librarians have received extensive combat training and are lethal with even the common toothpick."
Author: James Turner

12. "It is an awfully sad misconception that librarians simply check books in and out. The library is the heart of a school, and without a librarian, it is but an empty shell."
Author: Jarrett J. Krosoczka

13. "Do I have to talk to insane people?""You're a librarian now. I'm afraid it's mandatory."
Author: Jasper Fforde

14. "As it says on the Tshirts:'I don't scare easily - I'm a librarian.', which was the polite version of the original:'Don't give me any of your shit - I'm a librarian."
Author: Jasper Fforde

15. "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—)"
Author: Jess Walter

16. "I'm not offended, but the implication that all improper behavior is the result of what I do for a living is rather absurd. As if a chatty five-year-old with a librarian mom would be a red flag. "We expected your child to just sit behind her desk and shush people. Maybe she needs Ritalin."
Author: Jim Gaffigan

17. "Librarians understand about power - they know how to find anything."
Author: Joan Bauer

18. "I was so inspired by Dr. King that in 1956, with some of my brothers and sisters and first cousins - I was only 16 years old - we went down to the public library trying to check out some books, and we were told by the librarian that the library was for whites only and not for colors. It was a public library."
Author: John Lewis

19. "He's like Super Librarian, y'know? Everyone forgets, Willow, that knowledge is the ultimate weapon."
Author: Joss Whedon

20. "Heaven, Kiwi thought, would be the reading room of a great library. But it would be private. Cozy. You wouldn't have to worry about some squeaky-shoed librarian turning the lights off on you or gauging your literacy by reading the names on your book spines, and there wouldn't be a single other patron. The whole place would hum with a library's peace, filtering softly over you like white bars of light…"
Author: Karen Russell

21. "And Sarah still looked like the sexiest librarian on earth, which is as those of you who frequent libraries know means very sexy indeed, but with that added owlish touch that drives you wild."
Author: Kim Stanley Robinson

22. "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."
Author: Lady Gaga

23. "I can hazily remember, long ago, having adults — librarians, friends' parents — suggest to me that I liked books "with magic" because I wanted to escape from a reality that, by implication, I lacked the gumption to face."
Author: Laura Miller

24. "The moths were fluttering all over the sign at the desk that read DASHIELL QWERTY, SUB-LIBRARIAN. He was younger than I think of librarians as being, younger than the father of anyone I knew, and he had the hairstyle one gets if one is attacked by a scissors-carrying maniac and lives to tell the tale."
Author: Lemony Snicket

25. "[W]hat people truly desire is access to the knowledge and information that ultimately lead to a better life--the collected wisdom of the ages found only in one place: a well-stocked library.To the teachers and librarians and everyone on the frontlines of bringing literature to young people: I know you have days when your work seems humdrum, or unappreciated, or embattled, and I hope on those days you will take a few moments to reflect with pride on the importance of the work you do. For it is indeed of enormous importance--the job of safeguarding and sharing the world's wisdom.All of you are engaged in the vital task of providing the next generation with the tools they will need to save the world. The ability to read and access information isn't just a power--it's a superpower. Which means that you aren't just heroes--you're superheroes. I believe that with all my heart.[Source: Park, Linda Sue. "Writer vs. Author." Horn Book Magazine (Nov/Dec 2013), p. 28)"
Author: Linda Sue Park

26. "But you want murderous feelings? Hang around librarians," confided Gamache. "All that silence. Gives them ideas."
Author: Louise Penny

27. "Librarians are serious people, seldomgiven to idle jocularity. The reason for this, I believe, is because we are overwhelmed by the enormous number of good books waiting to be read, leaving little time for frivolity. My personal list of must-read books presents a daunting challenge; I can't even imagine the pressure our head librarian must be under."
Author: Lynn Austin

28. "Good librarians are natural intelligence operatives. They possess all of the skills and characteristics required for that work: curiosity, wide-ranging knowledge, good memories, organization and analytical aptitude, and discretion."
Author: Marilyn Johnson

29. "Before parents accept the wisdeom of a school board to cut school librarians, they should ask: Will my child graduate with a 21st-century resume, or a 19th-century transcript? . . . As the information landscape becomes ever more complex, why does a school district want to abandon its professional guides to it?"
Author: Mark Moran

30. "The librarian must be the librarian militant before he can be the librarian triumphant."
Author: Melvil Dewey

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

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

33. "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."
Author: Molly Harper

34. "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."
Author: Paula Poundstone

35. "Librarians as a race tend to be tedious."
Author: Peter Shaffer

36. "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."
Author: R. David Lankes

37. "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."
Author: Ray B. Browne

38. "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."
Author: Rebecca Makkai

39. "But put two librarians' heads together, and mountains move."
Author: Richard Peck

40. "We need librarians who can handle this tremendous jumble of information that is in cyberspace."
Author: Robert Darnton

41. "Wouldn't it be good if we could let teachers do what they do best - teach. Not judge each child on a series of standardized exams. Let schools embrace, not exclude, those like me with a different way of thinking.Stop praising literacy with one hand and closing libraries with the other. Let librarians be free to do what they do best: encourage a lifelong love of reading in every child, even the ones without a hope of ever getting an A star."
Author: Sally Gardner

42. "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."
Author: Sam Abell

43. "It took a bit of popcorn and a library snack bar to make me realize that being a librarian was about more than just giving people information. It was about serving a community. And if the community is hungry for more than just knowledge, then maybe it's about time to open a snack bar."
Author: Scott Douglas

44. "Librarianship is a form of heroism. It's just not as flashy as swords and dragons."
Author: Seanan McGuire

45. "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.)"
Author: Simon R. Green

46. "The Library of Alexandria?" I ask. "Didn't that burn down?"Mrs Philipoulus scoffs. "Damn fool Hypatia. Athena tried to convince her to install a sprinkler system. But no-o-o, no one was going to tell the librarianatrix how to run her library."
Author: Tera Lynn Childs

47. "Librarians are notorious snitches—don't let anybody convince you otherwise."
Author: Tom Upton

48. "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."
Author: Victoria Schwab

49. "Cynthia had been on friendly terms with an eccentric librarian called Porlock who in the last years of his dusty life had been engaged in examining old books for miraculous misprints such as the substitution of "1" for the second "h" in the word "hither." Contrary to Cynthia, he cared nothing for the thrill of obscure predictions; all he sought was the freak itself, the chance that mimics choice, the flaw that looks like a flower; and Cynthia, a much more perverse amateur of misshapen or illicitly connected words, puns, logogriphs, and so on, had helped the poor crank to pursue a quest that in the light of the example she cited struck me as statistically insane. ("The Vane Sisters")"
Author: Vladimir Nabokov

50. "But about the drip drip of long-haul, no-end-in-sight solitude, they know nothing. They don't know what it is to construct an entire weekend around a visit to the laundrette. Or to sit in a darkened flat on Halloween night, because you can't bear to expose your bleak evening to a crowd of jeering trick-or-treaters. Or to have the librarian smile pityingly and say, ‘Goodness, you're a quick reader!' when you bring back seven books, read from cover to cover, a week after taking them out. They don't know what it is to be so chronically untouched that the accidental brush of a bus conductor's hand on your shoulder sends a jolt of longing straight to your groin."
Author: Zoë Heller

Librarian Quotes Pictures