The Archive of the Forgotten (Hell's Library #2)

by A.J. Hackwith

Books, and the characters that awakened from them, might not be human but were worth a little humanity.

When someone decided to hate you, for whatever reason, there was rarely any good in trying to convince them otherwise.

But Brevity never was as afraid of making a mess. Claire admired that, the courage to spill things, fix your mistakes, try again. Claire had never had the stomach for it.

The leading edge of her forefinger had a permanent shadow worn into the creases from years, decades, of ink stains. Normal wear and tear for anyone who worked with fountain pens.

Claire rummaged in her pocket until she found a fountain pen. Brevity preferred the honest feel of charcoal on paper, but for some reason Claire had always preferred the modern inventions. Not too modern, mind you. Brevity once filched some standard ballpoint pens to bring back to Claire as a surprise. You would have thought she’d deposited a dead snake on her desk instead.

Maybe the story of humanity is learning to be brave enough to be the character in their own story.

“They burn them first, the stories. Humans always come for the stories first. It’s their warm-up, before they start burning other humans. It’s their first form of control, to burn the libraries, to burn the books, to burn the archives of a culture. Humans are the stories they tell. If you want to destroy your enemy, destroy their stories. Even if the people survive, it will be as if they never existed at all.”

I’m not sure if humans have sacrificed more ink than blood to their gods over the years, but if not, it has to be a near thing.”

THE PROBLEM WITH BEING made from a book, Hero had decided, was that everyone thought they could read you. The firmly held belief that they could look at you, read you once, and know the entirety of your contents for eternity. That a book was simply the sum of the text on its pages.

The curse of unwritten books is to never truly live but exist forever.

Ink became something that was a minor component of the pen, not the fuel for it.

Humans turned to paper and stories in the end, given enough time.

Mad . . . now, that’s a peculiar term, and, saints, don’t they love applying it to women. Women have a special facility for madness. We’re encouraged to go mad over the littlest things, because if our anger caught and held on the big things, we’d shape the world. It’s acceptable to be mad; it’s dangerous to be angry. The secret is that I am both.

A good story gets under your skin, because that’s where all good stories start. Librarian

Books are a secret hidden in plain sight. Read me, they say. Look at me. Turn my pages. Touch my spine. Read my words, and content yourself. Every book is a secret that only readers know.

A reader doesn’t mark his life by days but by memories. A book doesn’t mark its life by pages but by readers. We are made up of those whom we touch.

Going mad is an excellent defense. Nothing is so discounted, dismissed, as an eccentric woman speaking the truth.

Life—it goes on. Change happens. Secrets get out. Challenges appear. Decisions are forced. Whether we’re ready for them or not.”