Ink and Bone (The Great Library, #1)

by Rachel Caine

you don’t just have ink in your blood. It’s in your bones. Your skeleton’s black with it.

Everyone kept a record of the days and hours of their lives to be archived in the Library upon their deaths. The Library was a kind of memorial, in that way. It was one reason the people loved it so, for the fact that it lent them a kind of immortality.

There are three parts to learning: information, knowledge, and wisdom. A mere accumulation of information is not knowledge, and a treasure of knowledge is not, in itself, wisdom.

So much should never be held in the hands of so few, for it is a natural, venal habit of men to hold to power. And knowledge is the purest form of power.

the Library seek to protect us from what it deems dangerous knowledge.

But there is no wisdom without knowledge, no progress without danger, and I am not the Library’s child! I must acquire my own information, build my own knowledge, and, through experience, transform it to the treasured gold of wisdom.

calculated politics and unthinking rage—make no mistake, the two are sometimes hand in hand—are the greatest threats knowledge can face.

“The Doctrine of Ownership states that the Great Library must, for the protection and preservation of knowledge in trust for the world, own all such knowledge.

Tota est scientia.” Knowledge is all.

The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of the past centuries.

“Not all knowledge is books. Those out there, they’re history in stone. Men carved them. Men sweated in this sun to put them there, to make their city more beautiful. Who are you to say what’s worthy for men to see today, or tomorrow?” “You’re an irreligious bastard,” Portero said. “I knew you would be.” “I’m as good a Catholic as you,” Jess said. “I just don’t hold with making the world into copies of what I like.”

The Library might have brought the wisdom of ages into the lives of the common folk; it might have kept humankind from falling into the darkness of ignorance and despair and superstition. But that didn’t mean the hands of those in charge were clean.

he began to realize how much he had to learn about how different the world was from the theory of it.

We are only the most visible casualties of a silent war, and as they lock collars on our necks and tell us it is for our protection, we know that worse will come.

And now I’m turning into my father. What a fantastic day this has been.

Love, and the pain of knowing that love wouldn’t be enough.