With the tip of a finger, Cassovan straightened his stack of index cards. He found the smell of the library—the quiet, musty scent of books—oddly reassuring. It reminded him of the impermanence of his work: how deeply invested in it he was, and how little it meant to almost anyone else—which was as it should be. Men like Roland Gladwell imagined themselves with each completed project to be hewing their likenesses in bronze; but all scholarly endeavor was eventually reduced to these codified symbols tucked into endless paper beds, then bound between tombstone covers and seldom disturbed.
I really want to think about this. It's poignant and beautiful,, while also sad.
