"Tucker was an authority on libraries.  He went to them as often as drunks did to dry out and read up on their symptoms in the medical books; and as often as the crazies did to talk to themselves in corners and warm themselves by radiators...

It seemed to him sometimes that anyone with any trouble at all eventually found his way to a city library, and the really troubled ones became regulars.  Their features were wrecked with disappointment and forebearance...

Tucker loved wrecked faces, sad smiles, and soft tones, and the libraries of New York abounded in them."

"There were librarians and librarians.  There were the ones who wrote letters and read the latest magazines behind the information desks, and looked up at you as though you'd just dropped into their living rooms uninvited.  And there were the ones who conducted a small inquistion before getting up from their seats: Is it listed in the card catalog; did you look for it in the 600 section; did you look in Pay Duplicate?

But always, Tucker knew, there were the ones who really knew where everything was, and the answer to every conceivable question, and ways to look up things which would shame and astonish Socrates, Plato, Solomon and Dr. Pangloss."

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