The Book That Broke the World (The Library Trilogy, #2)

by Mark Lawrence

How many people, Evar wondered, had spent their youth, their whole lives, battering at locked doors, only to find—if they ever managed to open them—that there was nothing on the other side they couldn’t have found on their own side?

Fairness is something others try to impose at the surface level once they’ve fixed all the foundations in their favour.”

none of it was a waste, none of it was rendered meaningless, any more than a well-lived life was undone by the inevitable death waiting at the end.

this was what would either get them killed, or change history, or both.

“In any event, neither of you is going to pick a side based on the issues. Almost nobody ever does.”

The majority of each breath we take is gas of types that will not sustain us. The truth, like oxygen, is necessary if we are to live. And, like oxygen, if it is all we get, it will kill us.

Bravery doesn’t enter into it. The reason you face your fears is to stop them jumping you from behind.

Evar warned. “It hunts your fears and becomes them.” “Oh, I doubt that.” Yute glanced back at him. “I’m terrified of cocktail parties, awkward silences, and catching leprosy. I doubt it will become any of those.”

“Most fears could have been good things before we let them harden into what they are.”

the past has never cared about regrets.

“I’m fluent in more languages than I can count, but in none of them can age speak to youth. I say compromise—you hear weakness and cowardice. I say wisdom—you hear blinkered thinking, you see me hidebound, afraid of change. I say that the solutions will be messy, unsatisfying, and may leave both sides feeling dirty. You hear the call of distant trumpets; you see the vision of a future glittering on some high hill, raised above the murky swirl of warring faiths.”

“All of these words are noise. The only role the brain plays in these decisions is to come up with the explanation after the heart has chosen.”