Returns (The Library Trilogy, #1.6)

by Mark Lawrence

You cannot read the same book twice. When you return to the first page it will be a different “you”, changed by the very experiences you are seeking to recapture.

There are few worse crimes in our lore than a broken spine, a dogeared page. But the men and women, the souls, the … things … that wrote those books cared about the words. The ideas. Not the object. They would rather the books themselves fell apart after ten years in the hands of the thousandth reader than persist for eons on a shelf, waiting for the fire’s inevitable fingers to turn their pages.”

the destruction of a book is a price well worth paying if the alternative is keeping it unread in perfect safety.”

Secrets are no sin. They’re the vital glue that binds the narrative of our lives. Written in invisible ink, hidden in cipher, the current of mystery that makes each of us unknowable, that turns us into a question others might wish to ask.

We can journey to Crath City and to the library, we can put this book on its shelf. We can return the book because it hasn’t changed – but we ourselves can’t return, we can only move forwards like a clockwork toy, because time has us. And I have stood outside this stream. I saw every story this book has to offer in one many-facetted whole held within time’s jewel. But trading that vision for a place in the river, borne along with the rest of you, was a deal I would make again in a heartbeat. There is in the possibility of loss, and in every transient second of existence, a value and a beauty that cannot be seen from without. Never mistake the idea that something won’t last long, for the notion that it has little value. Rejoice in the temporary,

“We never know when or how it will end. And there’s a kindness in that too.”

“Every book is full of death. Or full of endings at least. There’s no turning back. No returning. You cannot read the same book twice.”

“You always get something out of reading a book. It’s a reward in and of itself.”

That is what my story is about. Somewhere between the story, the book inside it, between Holden and you, somewhere in that dynamic … it’s about pain … it’s a message I can’t write out in words. A message that couldn’t ever be written out in simple lines, as if one person were explaining it to another. It’s a thing that emerges between the reader and the text, and it’s always changing, but it’s always about the same thing.”