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

by A.J. Hackwith

“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.

Books burned because they threatened Bronze Age beliefs and scared old men in long robes. 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.”

Humans were always evolving new ways of not saying what they meant.

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.

A rational creature might at least consider whether any paradise one has to sacrifice others to get into is worth the price of admission.

Mortality has a way of forcing one to be honest with oneself; none of the frivolous barricades we erect in life withstand it.

“A fix that sacrifices someone is no fix at all.”

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.