“A library is not only a place of both order and chaos;
it is also the realm of chance. Books, even after they have been given
a shelf and a number, retain a mobility of their own. Left to their own
devices, they assemble in unexpected formations; they follow secret
rules of similarity, unchronicled genealogies, common interests and
themes. Left in unattended corners or on piles by our bedside,
in cartons or on shelves, waiting to be sorted and catalogued on
some future day many times postponed, the stories held by books
cluster around what Henry James called a ‘general intention’ that
often escapes readers: ‘the string the pearls were strung on,
the buried treasure, the figure in the carpet.'”
– Alberto Manguel,
The Library at Night, p. 163

Henry James reference from “The Figure in the Carpet,”
in Embarrassments (London: William Heinemann, 1896)