“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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“all cruelty and passion must burn away at last to leave behind them only pity.”
― Anya Seton, quote from Dragonwyck
“Once, long ago, Francis Crawford had reduced her to terror and, the episode over, she had suffered to find that for Kate, apparently, no reason suggested itself against making that same Francis Crawford her friend. He was not Philippa’s friend. She had made that clear, and, to be fair, he had respected it. He had even, when you thought of it, curtailed his visits to Kate, although Kate’s studied lack of comment on this served only to make Philippa angrier. He had been nasty at Boghall. He had hit her at Liddel Keep. He had stopped her going anywhere for weeks. He had saved her life. That was indisputable. He had been effective over poor Trotty Luckup, while she had been pretty rude, and he hadn’t forced himself on her; and he had made her warm with his cloak. He had gone to Liddel Keep expressly to warn her, and when she had been pig-headed about leaving (Kate was right) he had done the only thing possible to make her. And then he had come to Flaw Valleys for nothing but to make sure of her safety, and he had been so tired that Kate had cried after he had gone. And then it had suddenly struck her, firmly and deeply in her shamefully flat chest, so that her heart thumped and her eyes filled with tears, that maybe she was wrong. Put together everything you knew of Francis Crawford. Put together what you had heard at Boghall and at Midculter, what you had seen at Flaw Valleys, and it all added up to one enormous, soul-crushing entity. She had been wrong. She did not understand him; she had never met anyone like him; she was only beginning to glimpse what Kate, poor maligned Kate, must have seen all these years under the talk. But the fact remained that he had gone out of his way to protect her, and she had put his life in jeopardy in return.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from The Disorderly Knights
“Pity is such an awful, useless emotion- you have to bottle it up and keep it to yourself.The moment you try to express it, it only makes things worse.”
― Paul Auster, quote from Invisible
“I am so sorry. I wish you knew even one tenth of one percent of how sorry I am. ...It was my fault. Can I kill myself here, or should I do it outside, so the mess on your carpet doesn't upset your mother?”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from Twisted
“Should I tell her that I can’t sleep, I can’t eat and I miss talkin’ to her? Or just sittin’ with her? That I miss the secret way she smiles at me? That I constantly think about the way she smells, the taste of her mouth, the feel of her skin, and the sound of her laughter?”
― Lorelei James, quote from Cowgirl Up and Ride
The Hand of Oberon
Dumbing Us Down: The...
The Dissident
Horse Latitudes
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