What They Say
John Baker
I love libraries because they figure enormously in my earliest experiences. My local library was a twice-a-week event when I was a child and was the place where I began to learn how to live. The library is far and away the most important resource of any community.
Prunella Scales
I love my local library especially (Battersea) – it is so quiet and well stocked, and the staff are helpful and charming, and in touch with other local libraries if there’s any special book one wants.
Reginald Hill
In my childhood my local library was a box of delights. In my adolescence it also became a useful trysting place (libraries stayed open till 8 at night in those days!) And when I became a serious student it was of course my main resource centre.
Shirley Hughes
I use the recently refurbished branch library in Ladbroke Grove, North Kensington and the splendid Kensington Central Library where I have discovered their wide selection of story tapes. A long day's drawing and painting can be tough on the eyes, so what better pleasure after supper than to sit with a glass of wine in hand listening to modern classics, superbly read.
Frances Fyfield
My first experience of a library was the travelling library bus which came from Chesterfield to the mining village of Glapwell. We lived two miles away in the middle of nowhere, and the library, calling every fortnight, was absolutely vital, as well as magic. It's my first memory of reading being more important than eating. I read everything I could get, and because of the library bus, I could get everything.
Jeremy Dyson
My favourite library memory is borrowing an old copy of Bram Stoker's Dracula from Leeds Library. I couldn't believe that I was allowed to take home such a rare and exotic object and have it in my possession.
Jenny Nimmo
In the interminably long summer holidays I practically took up residence in my local library. Where else could you find such a feast all under one roof?
Helen Fraser
Libraries are a fantastic resource - whether you want to educate yourself, be entertained, or give your children a wonderful reading playground to explore.
Peter James
All those millions and millions of pages, printed with words chosen by writers of every kind, to entertain, to enthrall, to teach, to question. It was Socrates who said that the unexamined life was not worth living. In every library in our land life is examined ten thousand times over.
Kate Long
As a child I virtually lived in my local library. It felt as though the books, and the worlds inside them, belonged to me and it was the place I felt the happiest. There's a corner for everyone in a library.
Hilary Mantel
I love libraries because they give me big ideas. They are the palaces of the imagination, the treasure houses where ideas are kept. Without public libraries I could never have become a writer at all. I wouldn't have been aware of the range of world literature, and I wouldn't have been capable of the ambition – which has driven me for years – to put more volumes on the shelves of the places where I feel so much myself, where I feel so challenged and yet so reassured.
Annie Murray
They are real places, for real people, away from commercial hype, and we should cherish them in every way we can.
Penelope Lively
When I was in my twenties, I read my way through the local branch library, discovering likes and dislikes, finding out the kind of writing I admired, the authors I revered. Ever since, libraries have been an essential resource - for inspiration, for stimulation, for research.
Michael Holroyd
The public library was my home from home, my place of education in the holidays from school, and the most democratic of all universities. Here I found authors from all over the world lined up alphabetically waiting to entertain and instruct me. I owe it an immense debt.
Roy Hattersley
I was first taken to the children's branch of the Hillsborough Public Library in Sheffield when I was five and I have been going to libraries ever since. Without them I would have missed some of the greatest pleasures of my life.
Clare Francis
Every community needs a vibrant exciting library at its heart. All it takes is passion, imagination and commitment (and a decent book-buying budget). I have loved libraries ever since I was a child - I wish the Love Libraries Campaign huge success.
Kate Figes
Libraries are vital arteries for booklovers and the book trade.
Margaret Drabble
I love libraries because they have played such a vital part in my discovery of life, and are associated with such good memories. Some of my happiest hours, from early childhood on, have been spent in libraries. Having a library ticket makes a child feel very important and adult. They are an invaluable asset, and part of my working life.
Colin Dexter
In my 15th year, one of my kindly schoolmasters bullied me into foregoing my hebdomadal delight in The Dandy and acquiring in its stead a ticket for the public lending library. The first book I borrowed was P.C. Wren’s Beau Geste and sixty years later I have been borrowing ever since. Little did I realise at the time that I had been given the key to the vast treasure-house of English Literature; and it is in the hope that many more young people today will be able to share such a wonderful privilege that I am proud to support the Love Libraries Campaign.
Nick Arnold
A library is more than a room with books - it is the one place in the world where a million minds come together and time and space don't matter. I love libraries because if they didn't exist they would have to be invented and if they hadn't been invented I would never have become a writer.
Freya North
I love my local library – in fact, I write all my books from there!
Kate Kerrigan
The public library is not just a statement in society that books are important, but that access to them is every person's right.
Jenny Colgan
The great thing about libraries is you don't always find what you're looking for, so you end up discovering all sorts of wonderful authors you wouldn't otherwise.
Rowan Coleman
I go to libraries at least once a week with my daughter. We have story time there. We borrow lots of different books and we use the internet service.
Catherine Johnson
My library helped me build my own world when I was growing up. They are too valuable to be neglected.
Val McDermid
I love libraries because they give the gift of imagination.
Alison Penton Harper
Communities need libraries. They are wonderful places of discovery.
Barbara Taylor Bradford
I grew up in libraries. My mother was a voracious reader and took me to the library whenever she went. When I was old enough to have a library card, my mother got me two! And so obviously I have always loved the library.
Tim Waterstone
Libraries, at their best, are an extraordinary community resource, and a force for real good. They should be given every bit of the support and encouragement they need.
Minette Walters
All the authors that I love I first met in libraries, through their books. What's on offer is just fantastic: music, books, and you can access the internet. It's the most valuable resource.
Wilbur Smith
Flourishing public libraries are the hallmark of any educated and civilized society. We must give full support to our own.
Howard Jacobson
Public libraries are where it all begins - the readers who create the writers who create the readers. Public libraries are not only the treasure house of our culture, they are the promise for its future.
Marina Lewycka
The wonderful thing about libraries is that you can take a book home and try it out, and if you don't like it you can bring it back next week and try something else. I've discovered lots of marvellous writers this way.
Danielle Proud
Libraries are a place to escape, sit in a puddle of sunlight and go into a dream world flicking through your favourite books and discovering new ones you never knew existed (like mine!).
Gail Rebuck
Reading and free access to books is not a privilege it is a fundamental right. I love libraries because, through them, no matter what your circumstance, your reading ability, your ambition or your taste you will find books to amuse, entertain, educate and maybe even change your life.
Stephanie Calman
When I was at primary school we had a story read to us at the library every week. We all loved sitting down, away from home and school, and being read to. And afterwards, even though we’d heard it, there was always a fight to be first to take that book out. It started a kind of addiction that lasted for life.
Elizabeth Buchan
I think it is true to say that my local library shaped my life. It was my refuge, a source of infinite pleasure and peace, and a place in which my curiosity was unleashed.
Salman Rushdie
I have always loved and valued the public libraries of Britain, and I owe them a great deal (and not only in unpaid fines). If knowledge is power, then the public library system gives that power to anyone who wants it
Niall Ferguson
Sorry, but Google just isn't a substitute. Until you have experienced the excitement of browsing the shelves of a well-stocked library and finding not what you were looking for but something even better, you have not understood the joy of books.
Nicholas Evans
Libraries are caverns of treasure and those who work there are some of the finest unsung heroes of our age.
Anne Fine
I don't see how anyone achieves anything much without the library. Nobody's parents have both enough time and enough money to find all the books a child needs. The libraries I've used have enriched my whole life. They're the most valuable public institution we have and we should treasure as well as use them.
Mark Haddon
The local library service is the NHS for the imagination. And we should hang onto it for dear life.
John Sergeant
I strongly support this campaign. There is no substitute for books and reading. They can enhance the lives of everyone, and they should not depend on having money.
Jeremy Strong
My big brother and I used to go to the library at least once a week throughout our childhood. I remember standing in my local library when I was nine. I was looking at the rows and rows of books and I thought: wouldn't it be great to write stories – not just read them. That was the beginning of a long journey.
Louis Theroux
The practise of making a range of quality books available to the public at large, in comfortable and quiet surroundings, is one of the few unequivocal blessings that civil government bestows. Libraries are meeting places and refuges and bosoms of respite in an indifferent world. They are cosy front rooms we can share even when we are far from home. Adapting Dostoyevsky's remark about prisons, I say that the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its libraries.
Joanna Trollope
I love libraries because they are fascinating, free, fun and for everyone.
Irvine Welsh
When we were kids my friends and I used to go into the public library because it was the only place open in our housing scheme on cold winter nights. We generally just messed around and caused trouble. Then I would sneak back on my own, and enjoy the books as a guilty pleasure. And the thing was, I found out eventually that they were doing exactly the same thing. That place was our real school. I dread to think what would have happened to us without it
Jacqueline Wilson
I love libraries because there's still a wonderfully varied selection of books and all the librarians are so knowledgeable and helpful.
Christopher Brookmyre
The most exciting thing about libraries for me these days is seeing the energy and enthusiasm of my son as his eyes widen at the choices laid out before him: the promise, the anticipation, the untold possibilities. It's an easy thing for me to recognise, as I felt exactly the same thirty years before
John Bird
Libraries are one of the kindest places where it's almost their job to make you feel that you're important. You ask them for a book and they help you. I think that's fantastic!
Mark Billingham
My passion for reading flowered in that library and had I not been a reader I most certainly would never have gone on to write novels for a living. So in my case - as I suspect in the case of many other writers - libraries are, essentially, responsible for everything, and we should fight tooth and nail to preserve them.
Jeffrey Archer
What a tiny world we’d live in without libraries. They allow us to learn so much about so many subjects, and to enjoy the imagination of great story-tellers.
J K Rowling
C. S. Lewis’s World-Between-The-Worlds – that magical, mystical place, hushed and unhurried, where visitors could enter a thousand different worlds by jumping into different pools – always seemed to me to be the perfect metaphor for a library. Trips to the library with my mother are, in my memory, even more thrilling than trips to the sweet shop, and when I got my eldest daughter a library card I felt as though I had bought her citizenship of that same fabulous world.
Tracey Cox
Being surrounded by shelves and shelves of books always makes me feel terribly clever! It's as though I can absorb all the information by osmosis, simply by being there. The internet might be useful, but libraries are alive, they have soul.
Dave Myers (Hairy Biker)
As a working class lad who ended up going to university, the library was just invaluable, as I couldn't afford to buy books. Without it I would have been completely stuck. Libraries are such good resource centres now, with access to the internet, music and information on all aspects of the local community.
Si King (Hairy Biker)
When I first had kids, the local library gave us access to so many children's books, at a time when we wouldn't have been able to buy them. Libraries are a great community resource - it's where you find out what's going on in your area.
Virginia Ironside
I use my library in Shepherd's Bush all the time - I order new books, and know all the staff - a very jolly bunch.
Kate Mosse
Libraries in the UK are the first port of call for readers, young and old. It is in libraries - in our local towns, in schools and colleges - that many of us first discovered our favourite authors and fell in love with the habit of reading. Large and small, libraries act as a focus for reading in the community and help ensure that books stay centre stage.
Alex Wheatle
A library actually changed my life. I was 18, going nowhere fast and in prison. Then someone reccommended me a book I should read whilst in prison. I only got to read the book upon my release and I got hold of the book at the main library in Brixton. The book's title was THE BLACK JACOBINS by CLR JAMES. It changed my life because I wanted to be a writer. At 18 I had no qualifications, nothing. But I developed a hunger for reading. I read every thing I could and without realising it I was preparing for a future life as a writer. Now I am the author of 5 novels, the last being ISLAND SONGS, so I can testify that libraries do an awful lot of good.
Frank Delaney
There are some places that you love with your heart, and there are some places that you love with your mind - the places that you love with both are called "libraries".
Brian Keaney
As a children's author I am often asked what books I read when I was growing up. The answer is library books. There wasn't any money in our house to spend on books but the library was always there like a door into the world's imagination. I would never have become a writer without it.
Josephine Cox
I really value my local library. While writing WHISTLEDOWN WOMAN I needed to research the old Romany way of life, which was crucial to the plot. I was thrilled to find an old book there that had more informationthan I could have found without precious time and great difficulty. I was immensely grateful.
Chris Smith (Rt Hon Lord Smith of Finsbury)
They are places of excitement, entertainment, fun and enlightenment. And what’s more, all of this is available to every single one of us. What a simple idea; what a huge benefit to us all.
Ahdaf Soueif
I love the sense of being in a public space that is also private.
Philip Pullman
I love them, I cherish them, I use them all the time, I could not bear to live in a society without them. The library is for all of us. Let's look after it!
Caryl Phillips
I have moved many times in my life, but to this day the first thing I do after unpacking my boxes is to seek out the local library. And I join up.
Lesley Pearse
To me a library is an Aladdin's Cave of entertainment and knowledge.
Tony Parsons
Libraries are where I fell in love with books.
Rory MacLean
Local libraries are the key to expanding the horizons of our world.
Adele Geras
As soon as I go into a library all my everyday life falls away and I feel like someone who’s just wandered into an amazing shop where (almost!) everything you can take home is free.
Jamila Gavin
The library still stands at the heart of the community; a symbol of the mental health of a nation, where knowledge is for everyone – like health – free at the point of delivery.
Liz Fielding
The local library should be part of everyone’s life.
Stella Duffy
Growing up in small town in New Zealand, the library was the focal point for kids and where I discovered the joy of re-reading.
Alain de Botton
It's in walking into a library that most people first get the sense of how little they know.
Tracy Chevalier
Libraries have always been a part of the fabric of my life. The library taught me the value of being carried away into other worlds and others’ ideas.
Tim Bowler
I love libraries because libraries helped me to love books; and loving books turned me into a writer.
Stephen Booth
My parents didn't read books, and they couldn't afford to buy them anyway. So, from an early age, the only place I could find the reading I craved was the local library.
Terence Blacker
A thriving library system is an essential part of civilised society.
David Almond
My local library when I was a child was crucial in turning me into a writer.
Christine Aziz
I was a difficult teenager and looking back, I now realise how much my local library saved from fates worse than death. The books I borrowed were my refuge, and I often stayed on in the library after school, until closing time, reading as much as I could. The poetry I read, and the wonderful - and excitingly dreadful - characters I met in the books, exposed me to unknown worlds, eras, and new horizons. I did not feel alone with the confusing and powerful emotions I felt at that time. It confirmed what I had always known from my early scribblings, that I wanted to be a writer.