James I fantasizes about life in a library

Were I not a King, I would be a University-man. And I could wish, if ever it be my lot to be carried captive, to be shut up in this prison, to be bound with these chains, and to spend my life with these fellow captives which stand here chained.

King James I, on visiting Oxford’s Bodleian Library in 1605, which kept its books chained to shelves, quoted in Adam Nicolson, God’s Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible (New York: Perennial, 2004), p. 151.