The Last Book in the Universe (Scholastic Gold)

by Rodman Philbrick

Long-term memory is a thing of the past, no pun intended. The only ones left who can remember books are a few old geezers like me. And, apparently, you.”

I loved Bean right from that moment and it never changed. No matter what happened, all the bad things later, and me losing my family unit because of her, it never made me love Bean any less.

“You’re crazy,” I warn him. “You might be killed.” “Crazy?” He laughs and shakes his head. “They said Don Quixote was crazy, too.” “Who’s Don Keehote?” I ask. “A man who believed in doing the right thing, even if it cost him his life,”

And he marches into the daylight with his puny walking stick raised like a mighty sword.

The scrapers are just twisted steel skeletons now, enormous, eerie-looking things that disappear somewhere up in the smog.

“The only real treasure is inside your head,” he says, tapping the side of his skull. “Memories are better than diamonds, and nobody can steal them from you.”

“Lead on,” Ryter says to me with a grand gesture. “‘We’ve miles to go before we sleep. And promises to keep.’” After a moment, to let that sink in, he says, “That’s from a poem.”

You must remember the past because it brings you here, to the right now, today, this moment, and from here you can look to the future. A possible future I never even imagined until we went on our great adventure. I won’t get a chance to see that future, but you will.”