I long ago ran out of bookshelf space and so, like a museum with its art, simply rotate my books from the boxes to the shelves and back again.

In the New Yorker library, I have long been shelved between Nadine Gordimer and Brendan Gill; an eerie little space nestled between high seriousness of purpose and legendary lightness of touch.

I'm a writer who stacks cat food for a living. It's true: I have a master's degree in creative writing, I've published two critically successful books, and I get paid to replenish the shelves of my local food co-op with pet food, sponges and toilet paper. Nine days out of 10, I do it quite happily.

My books are shelved in different places, depending on the bookstore. Sometimes they can be found in the Mystery section, sometimes in the Humor department, and occasionally even in the Literature aisle, which is somewhat astounding.

What's funny is that by the time everyone plays the game - you know, we finish it, and then it takes a long time to make copies and ship it and get on the shelves - we probably haven't worked on it for a month, two months. So, we've already taken our break, and then we're on to the next thing.

The optimum amount of sugar in a product became known as the 'bliss point.' Food inventors and scientists spend a huge amount of time formulating the perfect amount of sugar that will send us over the moon and send products flying off the shelves.

I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.

I loathe computers more and more, so I have one I can shut down and shelve like a book.

Every product you have ever loved was a compromise from the ideal vision of its creators to the realities of shipping on time, on budget, and on price point. Anyone who has ever manufactured a physical product that had to be on the shelves for Christmas shopping knows how painful these choices can be.

My urge at Christmas time or Hanukkah-time or Kwanzaa-time is that people go to bookstores: that they walk around bookstores and look at the shelves. Go to look for authors that they've loved in the past and see what else those authors have written.

I was in my mid-teens when someone gave me a copy of 'Pears Encyclopaedia of Myth and Legends' as a birthday present. It sat on my shelves for many months before I looked at it. When I did, I couldn't stop reading it.

Love isn't something to be given on whim, or shelved when it isn't convenient. Love is gift, a promise, and a belief in another person. If you treat it as such, it will fulfill you always

The scent of books and the quiet hum of morning customers browsing the shelves welcome me. I'm home.

But suppose it was truth double strong, it were no truth to me if I couldna take it in. I daresay there's truth in yon Latin book on your shelves; but it's gibberish and no truth to me, unless I know the meaning o' the words.

The mandarins of culture-what do they do to teach the common folk to read? It's no good writing down lists of books for farmers and compiling five-foot shelves; you've got to go out and visit the people yourself-take the books to them, talk to the teachers and bully the editors of country newspapers and farm magazines and tell the children stories-and then little by little you begin to get good books circulating in the veins of the nation. It's a great work, mind you!

But some of the greatest achievements in philosophy could only be compared with taking up some books which seemed to belong together, and putting them on different shelves; nothing more being final about their positions than that they no longer lie side by side. The onlooker who doesn't know the difficulty of the task might well think in such a case that nothing at all had been achieved.

Those who wish to market their good deeds must do well to place their bad deeds on the shelve too.

You wanna go build some shelves with me?

Books. They are lined up on shelves or stacked on a table. There they are wrapped up in their jackets, lines of neat print on nicely bound pages. They look like such orderly, static things. Then you, the reader come along. You open the book jacket, and it can be like opening the gates to an unknown city, or opening the lid of a treasure chest. You read the first word and you're off on a journey of exploration and discovery.

You've got all these books on self help getting to know yourself doing the right thing eating the so-called right foods even down to what books you have on your shelves. People are encouraged to look to themselves first as opposed to being a part of society.

The society of dead authors has this advantage over that of the living: they never flatter us to our faces nor slander us behind our backs nor intrude upon our privacy nor quit their shelves until we take them down.

To this day my mom's unsinkable spirit is an inspiration to me. For nearly thirty years she's worked at the Library of Congress. Everyone knows Sameha simply as 'Sami.' Along with 500 miles of shelved books her closest friendships are cataloged in that library. They are as much the value of work to my mom as is the work itself.

My books are shelved in different places depending on the bookstore. Sometimes they can be found in the Mystery section sometimes in the Humor department and occasionally even in the Literature aisle which is somewhat astounding.

I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.