“The library smells like old books — a thousand leather doorways into other worlds. I hear silence, like the mind of God. I feel a presence in the empty chair beside me. The librarian watches me suspiciously. But the library is a sacred place, and I sit with the patron saint of readers. Pulsing goddess light moves through me for one moment like a glimpse of eternity instantly forgotten. She is gone. I smell mold, I hear the clock ticking, I see an empty chair. Ask me now and I'll say this is just a place where you can't play music or eat. She's gone. The library sucks.”
― Laura Whitcomb, quote from A Certain Slant of Light
“I couldn't take my eyes off him. Like a desert wanderer afraid of mirages, I gazed at my oasis, but he was real.”
― Laura Whitcomb, quote from A Certain Slant of Light
“To desperately hope," I whispered
James let out a breath. "To gratefully believe.”
― Laura Whitcomb, quote from A Certain Slant of Light
“Someone was looking at me, a disturbing sensation if you're dead.”
― Laura Whitcomb, quote from A Certain Slant of Light
“That I am your heart's secret fills me with song. I wish I could sing of you here in my cage. You are my heart's hidden poem. I reread you, memorize you every moment we're apart.”
― Laura Whitcomb, quote from A Certain Slant of Light
“He kissed me for a long moment, holding my shoulders, perhaps to keep me from pressing my whole body against his. Then he tried to lift my bag.
"My God," he said. "What happened?"
"I found out one may check out twenty books at a time from the school library.”
― Laura Whitcomb, quote from A Certain Slant of Light
“Your mind will never lose anything forever that's worth keeping.”
― Laura Whitcomb, quote from A Certain Slant of Light
“Just walk up to your hell & give it a push. Run through it & i'll be waiting on the other side.”
― Laura Whitcomb, quote from A Certain Slant of Light
“i would court you with passion, if things were different. you'd never get me off your porch swing. ”
― Laura Whitcomb, quote from A Certain Slant of Light
“Like a glimpse of eternity instantly forgotten. She is gone.”
― Laura Whitcomb, quote from A Certain Slant of Light
“Dear sir: twelve hours is as twelve years to me. I imagine you in your home, smiling, thinking of me. That I am your heart's secret fills me with song. I wish I could sing of you here in my cage. You are my heart's hidden poem. I reread you, memorize you, every moment we're apart.”
― Laura Whitcomb, quote from A Certain Slant of Light
“Books are boring," James said as he wrote.
"They line the walls like a thousand leather doorways to be opened into worlds unknown," I offered.”
― Laura Whitcomb, quote from A Certain Slant of Light
“About the library," he whispered. He took out the pencil stub from his pocket and poised it over the page.
"Will you write like Mr. Blake or like yourself?" I inquired.
He wrote and whispered the words aloud as he did. "I am in the library. It smells like old stuff."
"It smells familiar," I suggested. "It smells like words." Because his left side was to me, I couldn't easily take his hand to write.
"Books are boring," James said as he wrote.
"They line the walls like a thousand leather doorways to be opened into worlds unknown," I offered.
He thought about this and then wrote with a smile, "I hate books.”
― Laura Whitcomb, quote from A Certain Slant of Light
“Boys and girls hid in the library stacks or behind the gym and flew at each other with no promise of love or even kindness, tasting one another in clumsly attempts to steal pleasure before they could be hurt or hated.”
― Laura Whitcomb, quote from A Certain Slant of Light
“he was watching me and when our eyes met, i had no fan to cover my face, no way to hid my feelings. i was desperate for him, and he could see it, all the way in me. ”
― Laura Whitcomb, quote from A Certain Slant of Light
“I had asked her for help, and she had sent me to the lions. I knew that she was trying to save her little girl, but sometimes mothers with the best intentions kill their daughters all the same.”
― Laura Whitcomb, quote from A Certain Slant of Light
“Those who cry to be young again should think twice before they seal those prayers.”
― Laura Whitcomb, quote from A Certain Slant of Light
“It´s hard to have you with me but not to be able to take your hand or kiss you -James”
― Laura Whitcomb, quote from A Certain Slant of Light
“i felt my being flutter. each tousled head that came through the door i wanted to be his, but no and on, a dozen boys entered, yet not the one. ”
― Laura Whitcomb, quote from A Certain Slant of Light
“...You deserve to be happy. What can I do?"
Don't send me away, I thought.
He looked at me again. "What do you want?"
"I want to taste an apple," I said. And your lips, I thought.”
― Laura Whitcomb, quote from A Certain Slant of Light
“I would court you with a passion, if things were different.”
― Laura Whitcomb, quote from A Certain Slant of Light
“It seemed as if humans had lost the ability to make their own fun. The more they were gifted with inventions, the less they needed one another. They didn't sing or play the fiddle at the hearth; they turned on the stereo. They didn't tell stories on the porch; they watched television.”
― Laura Whitcomb, quote from A Certain Slant of Light
“It was all real and blazing with detail.
But I was shadow, light as mist, mute as the wallpaper.”
― Laura Whitcomb, quote from A Certain Slant of Light
“As I look around the quiet room, I see a thousand leather covers like doorways into worlds unknown.”
― Laura Whitcomb, quote from A Certain Slant of Light
“The library smells like old books-a thousand leather doorways into other worlds."
"Dear sir, I was called away and couldn't bring you, but now I feel haunted. I know that sometimes you felt I was a part of you and that losing me would leave a hole in your heart, but that's not true... Please forgive me... I am sorry that I didn't say goodbye.”
― Laura Whitcomb, quote from A Certain Slant of Light
“I studied a crescent moon hung crooked in a plum purple sky and thought about what it would be like to truly be seen.”
― Laura Whitcomb, quote from A Certain Slant of Light
“A sea of dreams trapped in a span of pressed pages”
― Laura Whitcomb, quote from A Certain Slant of Light
“Pulsing goddess light moves through me for one moment like - Here Mr. Brown paused again. Like a glimpse of eternity instantly forgotten.”
― Laura Whitcomb, quote from A Certain Slant of Light
“I would court you with a passion, if things were different. You’d never get me off your porch swing.”
― Laura Whitcomb, quote from A Certain Slant of Light
“in the wings, as often mothers and grandmothers are, ready to catch the children should they need saving,”
― Laura Whitcomb, quote from A Certain Slant of Light
Laura Whitcomb
Born place: The United States
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“Suddenly, political sucksters and realistic insectivores, shoving to the front, puffed up their stomachs and blew lies out of their fingers! A parade was formed! It was now an assembly on the arch, an enthusiastic troop of dunces, pasquil-makers, populist scribblers and lick-penny poets, anti-intellectual hacks, modernistic rubbishmongers, anonymuncules of prose and anacreontic water-bibbers all screaming nonce-words and squealing filthy ditties. They shouted scurrilities! They pronounced words backwards! They tumbled along waggling codpieces, shaking hogs' bladders, and bugling from the fundament! Some sang, shrill, purposely mispronouncing words, snarping at the language to mock it while thumping each other with huge rubber phalluses and roaring out farts! They snapped pens in half and turned somersaults with quills in their ears to make each other laugh, lest they speak and then finally came to the lip of a monstrously large hole, a crater-like opening miles wide, which, pushing and shoving, they circled in an obscene dance while dressed in hoods with long earpieces and shaking firebrands, clackers, and discordant bells! A bonfire was then lit under a huge pole, and on that pole a huge banner, to hysterical applause, was suddenly unfurled and upon it, upsidedown, were written the words: "In The End Was Wordlessness."”
― Alexander Theroux, quote from Darconville’s Cat
“He wants me back." The closing punctuation of "obviously" hung in the air. The confidence in her! Anne would always have it: the certainty that there would be a trail of people following her, wanting her love and her beauty. Flannery saw that confidence, and through the polluted air now between them it no longer charmed her. Not tonight it didn't. Flannery was not inclined to be one of that number.”
― Sylvia Brownrigg, quote from Pages for You
“Do you know the moment I laid my eyes on you, I felt the wind knock out of me, like someone just gut-punched me. I”
― River Savage, quote from Incandescent
“My mother tells Tina that she doesn't like books where the protagonist is established as Sad on page one. Okay, she's sad! We get it, we know what sad is, and then the whole book is basically a description of the million and one ways in which our protagonist is sad. Gimme a break! Get on with it!”
― Miriam Toews, quote from All My Puny Sorrows
“I exist as I am, that is enough" Song of Myself by Walt Whitman”
― Penelope Douglas, quote from Aflame
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A Perfect SpyBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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