quotes by Laura Whitcomb

""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."

From A Certain Slant of Light"
— Laura Whitcomb

"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 (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 (A Certain Slant of Light)

"Someone was looking at me, a disturbing sensation if you're dead."
— Laura Whitcomb (A Certain Slant of Light)

"Like a glimpse of eternity instantly forgotten. She is gone."
— Laura Whitcomb (A Certain Slant of Light)

""To desperately hope," I whispered
James let out a breath. "To gratefully believe.""
— Laura Whitcomb (A Certain Slant of Light)