The world is as quiet as it is capable of being. The time between 2 and 4AM is a magical time. By 7:30 I’m at my desk at work already pining for the book that I left on my nightstand at home. Every morning I’m up at 6 to read for an hour before hitting the shower. I do have a self imposed rule that I must go to bed by 4AM regardless of whether I’m tired because I still have this job that requires me to be cognizant enough to make decisions that will continue to make rich people richer. I usually keep a heavy, ponderous tome near to hand for nights of insomnia, but given that I went to bed thinking about this book I couldn’t possibly even try to read something else when my eyelids snapped open at 2AM. Not the best choice of reading material if the main objective is to go back to sleep. It is interesting, given the title of this book, that I read most of it in the middle of the night. Niccolo Machiavelli, a passionate reader. And for the course of four hours I forget the world, remember no vexations, fear poverty no more, tremble no more at death: I pass into their world.”

There I make bold to speak to them and ask the motives for their actions, and they, in their humanity reply to me.

On the threshold I strip off my muddy, sweaty, workday clothes, and put on the robes of court and palace, and in this graver dress I enter the antique courts of the ancients and am welcomed by them, and there I taste the food that alone is mine, for which I was born. ”When evening comes,” he wrote, “I return home and go into my study.

The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel