Quotes from Kristin O'Donnell Tubb

Whoever said that loss gets easier with time was a liar. Here's what really happens: The spaces between the times you miss them grow longer. Then, when you do remember to miss them again, it's still with a stabbing pain to the heart. And you have guilt. Guilt because it's been too long since you missed them last.

Some people are story collectors. While others collect seashells, or stuffed animals, or stamps, story collectors wrap themselves in words, surround themselves with sentences, and play with participle, even those pesky, perky dangling ones. They climb over Cs and mount Ms and lounge in Ls. Soon enough they land in the land of homonyms, then, wham! They stumble into onomatopoeia, that lovely creaking, booming bit of wordplay - and that, Dear Friend, is where our story begins.

Story collectors tend to be superstitious. Knock on wood, black cats, four leaf clovers... that sort of thing. After all, superstitions are the little stories we tell ourselves to make sense of our chaotic world.

When nightfall weaves its way through the New York Public Library, it is nothing shy of magic. Long stretched of sunlight on marble morph from white to yellow to pink to orange to red, the dim slowly, completely. Shadows yawn and stretch awake. Eighty-five miles of books on shelves blink away their daytime sleep, for book are often nocturnal creatures, ready to play. To roam. To hunt.

The moral of this story is that many amazing, sometimes hidden, things happen in a library. What's the story behind yours? What's your tale? The world is waiting to hear your Once Upon a Time.

This special, one-of-a-kind key: the unique mix of books and stories that he would choose to read. Different from everyone else on the planet. His blanks to fill in. His Once Upon a Time.

Behind her, the lamp turned back on.

Picture books build readers, Mr. Leon. Two missing books from our collection is like two missing bricks from a cathedral.

Hearts can do that, you know: hold on to something when the rest of you has forgotten about it. Hearts have longer memories than brains.

I was so used to feeling the emotions of others that I could not recognize my own.

Nervous people make poor listeners.

She firmly believed that fears were best fought head-on. Courage being fear stuffed with hope and whatnot.