Babel

by R.F. Kuang

He had no fire left in him.

Just kill me now. If she makes another poppy war reference Im just going to stop reading

but what a pleasure it was to hold the weight of an entire, finished story in his hands.

Inside, the heady wood-dust smell of freshly printed books was overwhelming. If tobacco smelled like this, Robin thought, he’d huff it every day.

He couldn’t read Professor Lovell’s expression at all. That scared him.

He felt marked, coated in scarlet paint,

The more languages you speak, the more men you are worth.

They argued endlessly, the way bright young people with well-fed egos and too many opinions do.

It was the kind of evening when the world seemed drained of colour, a painting in progress, a sketch really, existing in greys and shadows only.

‘You see?’ asked Anthony. ‘Languages aren’t just made of words. They’re modes of looking at the world. They’re the keys to civilization. And that’s knowledge worth killing for.’

And Robin found it incredible, how this country, whose citizens prided themselves so much on being better than the rest of the world, could not make it through an afternoon tea without borrowed goods.

He did not know that impressing a white man could be as dangerous as provoking one.

This applys to so many thing's