“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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“[M]y mother read a horror novel every night. She had read every one in the library. When birthdays and Christmas would come, I would consider buying her a new one, the latest Dean R. Koontz or Stephen King or whatever, but I couldn't. I didn't want to encourage her. I couldn't touch my father's cigarettes, couldn't look at the Pall Mall cartons in the pantry. I was the sort of child who couldn't even watch commercials for horror movies - the ad for Magic, the movie where marionette kills people. sent me into a six-month nightmare frenzy. So I couldn't look at her books, would turn them over so their covers wouldn't show, the raised lettering and splotches of blood - especially the V.C. Andrews oeuvre, those turgid pictures of those terrible kids, standing so still, all lit in blue.”
― Dave Eggers, quote from A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
“Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds;
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;
And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap,
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.
The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow,
Gave a lustre of midday to objects below,
When what to my wondering eyes did appear,
But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny rein-deer,
With a little old driver so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment he must be St. Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name:
"Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blixen!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"
As leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;
So up to the housetop the coursers they flew
With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too—
And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.
He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;
A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a pedler just opening his pack.
His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples, how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow;
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath;
He had a broad face and a little round belly
That shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly.
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;
He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight—
“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”
― Clement C. Moore, quote from The Night Before Christmas
“This was nonsense, he thought. The need of her was a physical thing, like the thirsty of a sailor becalmed for weeks on the sea. He'd felt the need before, often, often, in their years apart. But why now? She was safe; he knew where she was - was it only the exhaustion of the past weeks and days, or perhaps the weakness of creeping age that made his bones ache, as though she had in fact been torn from his body, as God had made Eve from Adam's rib?”
― Diana Gabaldon, quote from A Breath of Snow and Ashes
“The bowed head, the buried face. She is silent, she will never speak, never forgive, never reach a hand, never leave this frozen present tense. All waits, suspended. Suspended the autumn trees, the autumn sky, anonymous people. A blackbird, poor fool, sings out of season from the willows by the lake. A flight of pigeons over the houses; fragments of freedom, hazard, an anagram made flesh. And somewhere the stinging smell of burning leaves.”
― John Fowles, quote from The Magus
“I mean what they and their hired psychiatrists call delusional systems. Needless to say, ‘delusions’ are always officially defined. We do not have to worry about questions of real or unreal. They only talk out of expediency. It’s the system that matters. How the data arrange themselves inside it. Some are consistent, others fall apart. ”
― Thomas Pynchon, quote from Gravity's Rainbow
Volition
The Valley of Amazem...
Wolf in White Van
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