I Don't Ask For The

Don't Tell Me About The World. Not Today. It's Springtime And They're Knocking Baseball Around Fields Where The Grass Is Damp And Green In The Morning And The Kids Are Trying To Hit The Curve Ball.

For Those Without Money, The Road To The Treasure House Of The Imagination Begins At The Public Library.

The Best Newspapermen I Know Are Those Most Thrilled By The Daily Pump Of City Room Excitements; They Long Fondly For A Good Murder; They Pray That Assassinations, Wars, Catastrophes Break On Their Editions.

What Libraries Give You Is All Three Tenses - The Past Tense - The Present Tense In Which We Live And The Future That We Can Only Imagine. These Places Have Teachers Who Are Living And Dead And We Are Lucky To Have Them. If I Sit Here And Read Aristotle, He Is Speaking To Me Across A Thousand Years - More Than A Thousand Years. That Sense That I Am In The Company Of The Great Greatest People Who Ever Lived Is A Humbling Experience But A Liberating Experience.

In The End, The Only Thing The True New Yorker Knows About New York Is That It Is Unknowable.