The Book That Wouldn’t Burn (The Library Trilogy, #1)

by Mark Lawrence

Without guilt we would all be monsters. And memory is the ink with which we list our crimes.

she now knew that knowledge could be trapped in ink. It could be snared in words and locked to the pages of a book

Kindness carries a weight; it’s a burden all its own when you have nothing. Some undeniable part of Livira wanted to bite the hands that offered so much so freely. Pride is stupid, pride is blind, but pride is also the backbone that runs through us: without pride there’s no spring-back, no resilience.

Like all hunters, sorrow advances on slow, silent feet, until the last moment when it attacks from cover, springing with such speed that the impact rocks its victim on their heels.

Some silences stretch, the tension builds and builds again until the suddenness of the inevitable snap. That’s the quiet which lies between people. Other silences fall like a heavy blanket, enduring so long that they become a second skin which can be punctured but never broken. Words are like wounds to such a silence, quickly healed over, quickly forgotten, leaving no scar.

Scent is a peg on which memories are hung.