Denise

“A ‘library’ turned out to be a room where books were read. The fact that people used to have so many books that they needed a whole separate room just to store them, much less a word for the room, said everything Lan guessed she needed to know about the way the world used to be. In Norwood, loose pictures and salvaged magazines were locked up like other valuables. The mayor had a few books, including the town ledger where Lan’s own name had been written on the day of her birth and presumably crossed out along with her mother’s the day she’d left, but all of them together could have fit on one shelf. Here was a room the size of the dining hall, two stories tall and lined in bookshelves, with ladders on runners along every wall so that no shelf was out of reach. These were books that could not be measured in hundreds or even thousands, but in some greater number that had no name. If only she knew how to read.”
― R. Lee Smith, Land of the Beautiful Dead

“Don’t make fun of me,” Lan snapped. “I’m illiterate, not stupid! I know there’s no B in subtle!”
― R. Lee Smith, Land of the Beautiful Dead

“You were all my best days…and most of my worst ones, too, but that’s all right. The worst ones weren’t any worse than they might have been with anyone else, but the best ones were so much better. I love you.”
― R. Lee Smith, Land of the Beautiful Dead

“Because you told me the truth, even when you thought it was something I did not want to hear. That is how I know how much you love me. I do not need to be told.”
― R. Lee Smith, The Last Hour of Gann