"It has been the joy and pride of my life to open public places dedicated to books in New York, to deepen the experience of our streets, to push into the streetscape and claim spaces for the life of the mind. 
Our first bookstore had been a mob front, our second a steel factory, our third an Ann Taylor, our fourth fallow and vacant since it was built, our fifth a bank, and the new SoHo store had been a parking garage. Small victories won by readers and booksellers. Writers make it possible, writers living and passed. Sappho helps us pay the rent. Solzhenitsyn helps us pay our booksellers. It's an extraordinary industry, everyone in it has a debt of gratitude to the body of work that in its totality is something called books. Bound pages, one of the most enduring technologies. The interior voice, disembodied and shared, one of the most extraordinary innovations.
It has been a joy. Thanks for keeping us going."