“A library is not only a place of both order and chaos; it is also the realm of chance. Books, even after they have been given a shelf and a number, retain a mobility of their own. Left to their own devices, they assemble in unexpected formations; they follow secret rules of similarity, unchronicled genealogies, common interests and themes. Left in unattended corners or on piles by our bedside, in cartons or on shelves, waiting to be sorted and catalogued on some future day many times postponed, the stories held by books cluster around what Henry James called a ‘general intention’ that often escapes readers: ‘the string the pearls were strung on, the buried treasure, the figure in the carpet.'”
– Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night, p. 163.
Henry James reference from “The Figure in the Carpet,”
in Embarrassments, (London: William Heinemann, 1896)
