Patrick Carman Quotes

For some 25 years, I worked as a librarian, first at the New York Public Library, then at Trenton State College in New Jersey. My life has always been with, around, and for books.

A collection of good books, with a soul to it in the shape of a librarian, becomes a vitalized power among the impulses by which the world goes on to improvement.

…a very dangerous and contrary man … I would never see him alone.

I fell in love with reading when I was allowed to choose whatever books I wanted to check out of the library.

I worked in restaurants, and I worked in the Cambridge Public Library.

I was a librarian in a city school.

If I see one of my sales assistants neglecting someone because he doesn't look like a good client, he's fired immediately.

I have spent a reasonable percentage of my life in libraries - I like the hush.

Never have public feuds with anyone who's surrounded by people who carry guns.

It was good to walk into a library again; it smelled like home.

And every book, you find, has its own social group--friends of its own it wants to introduce you to, like a party in the library that need never, ever end.

The Library is a wilderness of books.

I've always loved reading fantasy. I used to pick out all the books in the library that had the little unicorn sticker on the side to show that they were fantasy.

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.

Someone out there was about to find that their worst nightmare was a maddened Librarian. With a badge.

sometimes after I finished a particularly good book, I had the urge to get the library card, find out who else had read the book, and track them down to talk about it

One of the nastier trends in library management in recent years is the notion that libraries should be 'responsive to their patrons'.

I fell in love with books at the Elizabeth Public Library when I was four.

You can take the girl out of the library, but you can’t take the neurotic, compulsively curious librarian out of the girl.

On my first visit to the public library, I was like a kid at a candy store where all the candy was free. I gorged myself until my tummy ached.

Ma'am, are you trying to molest me via drivethru?

Our concern for the future can be tested by how well we support our libraries.

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.

I will say that I don't expect anybody to do anything that makes them feel uncomfortable. Or makes them feel like they're putting themselves in a bad position with their job.

But with the library, it's like catnip, I suppose: you begin to run in circles because there's so much to look at and read.