Quotes from Jon Cohen

Ordinarily, when the great oak doors groaned open and someone entered Prat Library there would be a burst of sunlight, a bright harsh intrusion on the dim and quiet. But when Oriana Jeffers came through the doors, the light transmuted into moonbeams and star-shimmer, and all the books on the shelves fluttered awake. Oh joy, they whispered, a READER.

By its very nature [...] love is tragic. You can't protect it. No matter how tightly you hold on to the one you love, they leave you or you leave them. That's what life is, loving and letting go. I am so grateful to those two young lovers of sixty years ago. I am so grateful to have tasted love. But all love ends tragically. Because, tragically, love always ends. What a heartbreaking and wonderful conundrum! Whether you have it just a few weeks, or years, or your entire life--always, it ends.

What is a library, but a temple of truth? What other function do books have, the great ones, but to change the reader? Books to comfort. But most of all, books to disturb you forward.

The Grum's Ledger is a tale of regret. In real life, there was no happy ending. Alexander Grum died alone because he was afraid to seize love and risk and all the unknowns that go with it. He chose certainty- and it was his ruin.

Is everything a story to you?" Harry called after her. "Absolutely!" came Olive's voice. "I'm a librarian, dear!

He [God] chooses not to intervene in the world. Why not? Because he figures he's done enough and the rest is up to us? Or he wouldn't know where to begin? Or because he's in awe of his own miracle? That's how I picture him, his mouth slightly agape, his eyes wide in disbelief.

I am in a tree, thinking tree thoughts.

What mother could abandon the dream that lived inside her, deny the one thing in this world she knows as certain, which is the absolute and everlasting beauty of her child?