“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 susp...”

“It was all real and blazing with detail. But I was shadow, light as mist, mute as the wallpaper.”

“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 ma...”

“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.”

“A sea of dreams trapped in a span of pressed pages”

“I studied a crescent moon hung crooked in a plum purple sky and thought about what it would be like to truly be seen.”

“A library should fill our leisure with adventure. It is a refuge from the commonplace and the dull, a sanctuary where all the trials, the tribulations, and the boredoms of the outer world are forbi...”

“What's a horizon?' Lazlo asked, straight-faced. 'Is it like the end of an aisle of books?”

“Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part I read only to please myself and like only what suits my taste.”

“nights and days came and passedand summer and winterand the sun and the windand the rain.and it was good to be a little islanda part of the worldand a world of its ownall surrounded by the bright b...”

“When you drop a glass or a plate to the ground it makes a loud crashing sound. When a window shatters a table leg breaks or when a picture falls off the wall it makes a noise. But as for your heart...”

“A good friend of mine once said, "I have never met a bigot who was a reader as a child.”

“Some experiences are universal. A girl is a girl whether she lives in West Omaha or Sweet Valley. Books are often far more than books.”

“A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.”

“The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,And all the sweet serenity of books”