“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.”
“Pulsing goddess light moves through me for one moment like - Here Mr. Brown paused again. Like a glimpse of eternity instantly forgotten.”
“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.”
“The library was a little old shabby place. Francie thought it was beautiful. The feeling she had about it was as good as the feeling she had about church. She pushed open the door and went in. She liked the combined smell of worn leather bindings, library past and freshly inked stamping pads better than she liked the smell of burning incense at high mass.”
“But I loved the library simply because it was a library. I love libraries. I like reading, but I love libraries. Being surrounded by books makes me feel safe, the way some people need trees or mountains around them to feel secure. Not me – nature’s not what I cling to. I cling to books.”
“Don't play games with me! You just killed someone I like, that is not a safe place to stand! I'm the Doctor, and you're in the biggest library in the Universe. Look me up.”