Motivations Are Too Tangled And Complex.

Lists Of Books We Reread And Books We Can't Finish Tell More About Us Than About The Relative Worth Of The Books Themselves.

Nobody Does Anything For One Reason.

One Of The Things I Have Tried To Do With This Book And With All Of Them Really Is Avoid That Simple, Easy, Reductionist View Of Motivation And To Show We Do Things For A Complex Net Of Reasons, A Real Braid Of Reasons.

Through Writing, Through That Process, They Realize That They Become More Intelligent, And More Honest And More Imaginative Than They Can Be In Any Other Part Of Their Life.

Public Libraries Are The Sole Community Centers Left In America. The Degree To Which A Branch Of The Local Library Is Connected To The Larger Culture Is A Reflection Of The Degree To Which The Community Itself Is Connected To The Larger Culture.