When you sell a man a book you don't sell him just 12 ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life. - Christopher Morley

Suppose someone tried to write your biography. What nonsense! How much would he know? Would he know what you thought when you looked in the subway slot-machine? How brutally you spoke when you were angry? How Nature rode you with a busy spur? How you fell on your knees late at night?

He was willing to wait until the last dollar was broken: in the meantime he was content. You never know the soul of a city, he said, until you are down on your luck. Now, he felt, he had been here long enough to understand her.

They go in not because they need any certain volume but because they feel that there may be some book that needs them.