The Librarian of Burned Books

by Brianna Labuskes

“Books are a way we leave a mark on the world, aren’t they? They say we were here, we loved and we grieved and we laughed and we made mistakes and we existed. They can be burned halfway across the world, but the words cannot be unread, the stories cannot be untold. They do live on in this library, but more importantly they are immortalized in anyone who has read them.”

that if you faked confidence well enough, other people would start believing you knew what you were doing.

That’s how war was. Everyone had a touching story to tell, and yet because of that, it was almost like there were none.

“Is your little library not a symbolic beacon to the world that words are more powerful than flames?”

The way to judge people wasn’t to look at how they acted toward people they wanted to impress; it was to look at the way they treated those who could do nothing for them.

words cannot be unwritten simply because you burn them. Ideas cannot simply be erased. People cannot be erased.”

“Burning books about things you do not like or understand does not mean those things no longer exist.”

“Nazis are portrayed in propaganda as ignorant anti-intellectuals. But the leaders know just how powerful knowledge is. That’s why they want to control it so strictly.”

When you sell a man a book you don’t sell him just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue—you sell him a whole new life. Love and friendship and humor and ships at sea by night—there’s all heaven and earth in a book.’”

It is not failure we should fear but inaction.

Even in the darkest days, in their deepest grief, at their most exhausted, humans found a way to create moments that were so fundamentally hopeful that they couldn’t help but inspire you to take one more step forward. And then one more.

We are just different from the others, who curiously wander at first through a thousand wonders, and yet only see the banal in the end.

Heinrich Heine’s prediction. Where they burn books, they will also ultimately burn people.

stories can help us understand each other and ourselves and our world. That even our darkest days can be about more than simply survival. The

the moment right before the gasoline was poured on the books. The moment the most educated country in the world willingly, joyously, wholeheartedly turned away from knowledge.”

banning books, burning books, blocking books is often used as a way to erase a people, a belief system, a culture,” Hannah said. “To say these voices don’t belong here, even when those writers represent the very best of a country.

history is built on moments that feel insignificant.

in every moment you must ask yourself: Do you want to be the ones handing out the gasoline cans? Or the ones trying to put out the fire?”

an attack on books, on rationality, on knowledge isn’t a tempest in a teacup, but rather a canary dead in a coal mine.

“There are moments in life when you have to put what is right over what party you vote for. And if you can’t recognize those moments when the stakes are low—let me assure you, you won’t recognize them when the stakes are high. Thank you.”