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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“She's so obnoxious. Like a whole Saturday night drunk tank full of obnoxious packed into one little body." Detective Cavuto”
― Christopher Moore, quote from Bite Me
“earth-toned slate, and the walls were painted in a golden-brown color. Everything looked luxurious. My mother would have died if she saw this place. It looked like a palace. We walked through the hallway into a large open room, which had floors”
― Cameo Renae, quote from Hidden Wings
“The brief span of an individual life is misleading. Each one of us is as old as the entire biological kingdom, and our bloodstreams are tributaries of the great sea of its total memory. The uterine odyssey of the growing foetus recapitulates the entire evolutionary past, and its central nervous system is a coded time scale, each nexus of neurones and each spinal level marking a symbolic station, a unit of neuronic time.”
― J.G. Ballard, quote from The Drowned World
“An organization once offered a bounty of five thousand dollars apiece for wolves that were captured alive. Enticed by the idea of such money, Sam and Jed eagerly set out through the forests and into the mountains in search of the animals that could secure their fortune. They fell asleep under the stars one night, exhausted after days of enthusiastic hunting. Sam awoke in the middle of the night and saw about fifty wolves surrounding him and Jed—hungry wolves, baring their teeth, with their eyes glistening at the thought of easy human prey. Realizing what was going on, Sam nudged his friend and said eagerly, “Jed, wake up! We’re rich!”1 A positive attitude enables you to make the best of every situation, and that gives you power over your circumstances instead of allowing your circumstances to have power over you. This was certainly true for Sam. While most people would be terrified when surrounded by a wolf pack, Sam saw the opportunity he’d been waiting for. Make a commitment today to be a positive person. The more positive you are, the more powerful you’ll be.”
― Joyce Meyer, quote from Power Thoughts: 12 Strategies to Win the Battle of the Mind
“It is unquestionably foolish to begin a battle when you don't know the full strength of your adversary.”
― Claire Kent, quote from Escorted
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