Alberto Manguel
Alberto Manguel
Alberto Manguelis an Argentine Canadian anthologist, translator, essayist, novelist and editor. He is the author of numerous non-fiction books such as The Dictionary of Imaginary Places, A History of Reading, The Library at Nightand Homer's Iliad and Odyssey: A Biography; and novels such as News From a Foreign Country Came. Though almost all of Manguel's books were written in English, two of his novelswere written in Spanish, and El regreso has not yet been published in English. Manguel has also...
NationalityArgentinian
ProfessionWriter
Alberto Manguel quotes about
real stories world
The telling of stories creates the real world.
night voice library
At night, here in the library, the ghosts have voices.
long library empty
In a library, no empty shelf remains empty for long.
assuming reader
Every text assumes a reader.
soon-enough purpose icy
I know my time will come soon enough, but I will not dwell on it. What is the purpose? We might as well dwell on the work of our teeth or on the mechanics of our walk. It is there, it will always be there, and I don't intend to spend my glorious hours looking over my shoulder to see death's icy face.
suicide reading sentimental
The readers who commited suicide after reading 'Werther' were not ideal but merely sentimental readers.
reading excellence occupation
Reading is the occupation of the insomniac par excellence.
ivory-tower games ideas
It used to be that readers were relegated because they considered themselves far above society, and so the metaphor of the ivory tower developed. Now there's still this idea that the reader doesn't take part in the social game and in politics, the res publica, but for other reasons: he doesn't do it because he's not making any money.
reading progression reader
I quickly learned that reading is cumulative and proceeds by geometrical progression: each new reading builds upon whatever the reader has read before.
reading social contracts
reading is at the beginning of the social contract
jealous government skills
As readers, we have gone from learning a precious craft whose secret was held by a jealous few, to taking for granted a skin that has become subordinate to principles of mindless financial profit or mechanical efficiency, a skill for which governments care almost nothing.
technology years vocabulary
We are losing our common vocabulary, built over thousands of years to help and delight and instruct us, for the sake of what we take to be the new technology's virtues.
ambition reader bounds
But a reader's ambition knows no bounds.
magic pages found
Every reader has found charms by which to secure possession of a page that, by magic, becomes as if never read before, fresh and immaculate.