Overdue (The Library Trilogy, #1.5)

by Mark Lawrence

“When you sell someone a book you give them ownership of something without it being taken away from anyone else. You give them a ticket for a voyage. A door to other worlds. People walk out of here not truly knowing what they’re carrying with them. They used to put locks on books. Did you know that? Individual locks. I don’t approve of that, but I like the symbolism. You still need a key to open a book. I’m not talking about turning the cover here – to open the story, you need a key, and you are the key. Perhaps you won’t fit. Perhaps you will and the story will open for you.”

“But people don’t value what has no price,” Yute said. “People receiving stories for nothing do nothing with them. Where books are so cheap that the price isn’t noticeable they drift in unloved heaps. The freely given is stepped over in the rush to spend on something we’re told we can’t have unless we pay.”

nothing kills off a book like too much hype – though ironically hype’s exactly what’s needed for them to flourish. Similar deal with oxygen: too little, you die; too much, you die.

“The Exchange connects them, you see? Bookshops. Libraries great and small. Who knows where it ends? Perhaps individual bookcases in private homes also touch the Exchange.

“I wanted to have said something that was heard. To have been seen and to have had that make a difference to someone.”

I think … I think that everyone who ever lived is still alive in every moment of their lives, strung out through the prism of time like beads on a thread.”