Josh Hanagarne · 291 pages
Rating: (9.7K votes)
“I also work here because I love books, because I'm inveterately curious, and because, like most librarians, I'm not well suited to anything else. As a breed, we're the ultimate generalists. I'll never know everything about anything, but I'll know something about almost everything and that's how I like to live.”
― Josh Hanagarne, quote from The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family
“A library is a miracle. A place where you can learn just about anything, for free. A place where your mind can come alive.”
― Josh Hanagarne, quote from The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family
“The public library contains multitudes. And each person who visits contains multitudes as well. Each of us is a library of thoughts, memories, experiences, and odors. We adapt to one another to produce the human condition.”
― Josh Hanagarne, quote from The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family
“I'll never know everything about anything, but I'll know something about almost everything and that's how I like to live.”
― Josh Hanagarne, quote from The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family
“To see the value of a library, ignore the adults. Find an inquisitive child who doesn't have an iPhone yet, take them to the library, and tell them that they can learn anything they want there.”
― Josh Hanagarne, quote from The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family
“A community that doesn't think it needs a library isn't a community for whom a library is irrelevant. It's a community that's ill.”
― Josh Hanagarne, quote from The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family
“The library has a robust collection of what I call non-cuddly hate lit. This is one of my favorite things about working here: If you believe censorship is poison, here lies paradise.”
― Josh Hanagarne, quote from The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family
“The word 'yes' is just a sound. It's nothing without context. It can signal the end of a life, an exultation after a scored basket or a vanquished foe; it can answer questions or refute them; it's an affirmation.”
― Josh Hanagarne, quote from The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family
“At its loftiest, a library's goal is to keep as many minds as possible in the game ...”
― Josh Hanagarne, quote from The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family
“A good library’s existence is a potential step forward for a community. If hate and fear have ignorance at their core, maybe the library can curb their effects, if only by offering ideas and neutrality. It’s a safe place to explore, to meet with other minds, to touch other centuries, religions, races, and learn what you truly think about the world.”
― Josh Hanagarne, quote from The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family
“Test everything that can be tested. As soon as you think you know something, that's when you stop questioning it. Understanding kills curiosity. Understanding kills progress.”
― Josh Hanagarne, quote from The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family
“I work [at a library] because I love books, because I'm inveterately curious, and because, like most librarians, I'm not well suited to anything else. As a breed, we're the ultimate generalists. I'll never know everything about anything, but I'll know something about almost everything and that's how I like to live.”
― Josh Hanagarne, quote from The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family
“A mind can be lost without its owner's death. A mind that no longer questions only fulfills the rudimentary aspects of its function.”
― Josh Hanagarne, quote from The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family
“When I was his age, and even today, when it comes to books and libraries, too much is never enough”
― Josh Hanagarne, quote from The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family
“It is what is. I repeated, looking at him in the eyes. No. It isn't. That's stupidity right up there with 'failure is not an option.' Of course it's an option or there wouldn't be any sort of adventure to it, would there? The word 'adventure' means undetermined outcome, did you know that? So failure would have to be an option, right?”
― Josh Hanagarne, quote from The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family
“When someone makes a Family Circus reference and everyone on the room laughs, I'm in the wrong room.”
― Josh Hanagarne, quote from The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family
“Josh, do you know what my favorite thing is? she asked. I mean, my very favorite thing?
I'm not sure.
It's when the whole family comes for a holiday and you kids just sit around and laugh together. You don't have any idea what that feels like for me. There's nothing I look forward to more.”
― Josh Hanagarne, quote from The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family
“I’m rarely at a loss for words outside the library. But within its walls I'm required to form sentences that no logical person should ever have to utter, for instance, "You can't sleep on the floor at the library under your blanket.”
― Josh Hanagarne, quote from The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family
“I love to tell kids that everything in the library is theirs. "We just keep it here for you." One million items that you can have for free! Collection that represents an answer to just about any question you could ask. A bottomless source of stories and entertainments and scholarly works and works of art.”
― Josh Hanagarne, quote from The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family
“As a librarian, saving lives and worlds isn't in my purview, although if I could put those on my resume with a straight face, I would. Saving minds, however … perhaps it's not as farfetched. A mind can be lost without its owner's death. A mind that no longer questions only fulfills the rudimentary aspects of its function. A mind without wonder is a mere engine, a walking parasympathetic nervous system, seeing without observing, reacting without thinking, a forgotten ghost in a passive machine.”
― Josh Hanagarne, quote from The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family
“I love to tell kids that everything in the library is theirs. “We just keep it here for you.” One million items that you can have for free!”
― Josh Hanagarne, quote from The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family
“An old librarian once said to me, " whatever we deal with, coming here is always a visual reward.”
― Josh Hanagarne, quote from The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family
“You can repent of most sins by making restitution, but you can't bring a dead body back to life, and you can't restore your virginity. We are made in God's image, and God is no fornicator.”
― Josh Hanagarne, quote from The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family
“For Orwell, the loss of a life was the loss of a mind was the loss of a world, and the world we inhabit is poorer for each loss, for the contributions that mind could have made.”
― Josh Hanagarne, quote from The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family
“I smiled at these books every time I saw them on my shelves. In many ways I sill feel like an incomplete person, but at least I had those books; I was more complete than anyone unlucky enough not to have them.”
― Josh Hanagarne, quote from The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family
“Each of us is a library of thoughts, memories, experiences, and odors. We adapt to one another to produce the human condition.”
― Josh Hanagarne, quote from The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family
Josh Hanagarne
Born place: in Moab, The United States
Born date December 1, 2018
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“I can tell you that you will have your hearts broken more by the people you love than by the people you hate. But you must still dare to love. The rewards are worth far more than the risks.”
― Margaret Peterson Haddix, quote from Into the Gauntlet
“The things you think are the disasters in your life are not the disasters really. Almost anything can be turned around: out of every ditch, a path, if you can only see it.”
― Hilary Mantel, quote from Bring Up the Bodies
“In his original design the solicitor's clerk seemed to have forgotten the need for a staircase to link both the floors, and what he had provided had the appearance of an afterthought. Doorways had been punched in the eastern wall and a rough wooden staircase - heavy planks on an uneven frame with one warped unpainted banister, the whole covered with a sloping roof of corrugated iron - hung precariously at the back of the house, in striking contrast with the white-pointed brickwork of the front, the white woodwork and the frosted glass of doors and windows.
For this house Mr.Biswas had paid five thousand five hundred dollars.”
― V.S. Naipaul, quote from A House for Mr Biswas
“He had not breathed a word of love, or dropped one hint of tenderness or affection, and yet I had been supremely happy. To be near him, to hear him talk as he did talk, and to feel that he thought me worthy to be so spoken to - capable of understanding and duly appreciating such discourse - was enough.”
― Anne Brontë, quote from Agnes Grey
“Tonight," he said, "we shall get quietly and thoroughly drunk...in memory of all that was lost. And on the morrow, I begin the struggle to win it back.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, quote from The Reckoning
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