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

by Mark Lawrence

“There’s nothing brave in committing to a fight—you just need to understand that there’s a scarier outcome waiting for you if you don’t. Hesitation’s the killer. They try to train hesitation out of you, but most people have it in their bones. Only thing that makes me different is: I see—I do. It’s not a matter of heart and soul.”

There are moments in life when you know with a great and unshakeable certainty that everything will change.

But what we don’t know vastly outweighs what we do know.”

Arpix had told her there were books in the library that were thousands of years old. And not just one or two, but legions of them. So many that there must, Livira thought, be pages within their covers that had waited a thousand years to be seen again. And the magic was that just by running her eyes over those squiggled letters the thoughts of some long-dead author would wake within her head.

Why had he taken the time to hate her and to pursue that hatred? It made no sense.

There are moments in life when you know with a great and unshakeable certainty that everything will change.

Familiarity breeds contempt

But there was something about the number of choices that paralysed him. Rather like when it came to choosing a new book from the stacks. The knowledge that he couldn’t possibly read all the books on offer put a peculiar pressure on choosing his next read. There must be diamonds out there, the best book in a thousand, the best book in a million, and surely he didn’t want to waste his time reading one that was merely adequate when he could be reading one of those diamonds? So instead, he often wasted his time hunting for a read instead of reading.

Trust is the most insidious of poisons, but there are many alternatives that serve almost as well. As with comedy, delivery is a vital component. If the target is aware of the attack, the chances for success are immediately much reduced.

Few things are worse enemies of civilisation than a corrupt official, but an honest official of corrupt laws is definitely one of them.

Her memory was essentially infallible as far as facts were concerned, but emotion had a tendency to dry like ink and cease to glisten. It needed to be captured as close to the moment as possible.

All of us steal our lives. A little here, a little there. Some of it given, most of it taken. We wear ourselves like a coat of many patches, fraying at the edges, in constant repair. While we shore up one belief, we let go another. We are the stories we tell to ourselves. Nothing more.

“We deal in affirmation. People don’t want truth. They say that they do but what they mean is that they want the truth to agree with them. Take ninety-nine books that say one thing and one that says the opposite. If that opposite was what the customer was hoping to hear, they’ll put their stock in the single volume. In this manner we learn more regarding human nature from closed books than from anything that might be written within them.”

One person could hold a secret tight to their chest with both hands. When it was two, or three, or four people it was as if that secret had to be tossed back and forth between them, creating many chances to drop it.

All of us in our secret hearts, in our empty moments of contemplation, stumble into the understanding that nothing matters. There’s a cold shock of realisation and, in that moment, we know that nothing at all is of the least consequence. Ultimately, we’re all just spinning our wheels, seeking to avoid pain until the clock winds down and our time is spent. To give someone purpose is to free them, however briefly, from the spectre of that knowledge.”

“Hurts don’t stop, but they fade into shadows of what they were. That’s sad. That something so vital, something that bit you so deep, can be eroded by time into a story that almost seems like it happened to someone else. Any hurt. The years have taken away her meaning. It lessens us.”

‘Nostalgia is the best and the worst feeling—complex—nothing has the ability to so delight and wound us simultaneously, except perhaps for love.’ ”

“What does nostalgia mean to a child? An abstraction. A standing stone waiting for them in the mist. Walk a path across some decades, any path you like, and the word will gather weight. It will come to you trailing maybes and might-have-beens. Nostalgia is a drug, a knife. Against young skin it carries a dull edge, but time will teach you that nostalgia cuts—and that it’s a blade we cannot keep from applying to our own flesh.”

“The greater good cannot be served by demonising a species, Algar, let alone a race of man. And if the greater good was never truly your goal, then consider that in this instance the same also applies to profit.”

Dogs, and small children, are well known for showing an interest in the ownership of an object only after another has tried to claim it. Sadly, many adults are too. Not all such struggles are, however, without epiphany. On rare occasions, we realise that while competition may have made us look with new eyes at some familiar thing, we have, unknown to ourselves, always held in our secret hearts the truth that this was precious to us, something holy, and that had it ever been threatened we would have stood in the fire’s path to defend it. Fatherhood, by Jorg of Ancrath

There are no perfect lives. Sooner or later, you will bite the apple and see half of a worm. Whether you spit out what you’ve taken or have a second bite is generally a function of hunger. The worm is, after all, made entirely of apple.

“People die, brother. That’s what I’ve learned. Life’s cheap, easily spent. And if there’s any joy to be had it’s in the moments between. So, when you find something that makes you happy you take it with both hands, and you hold on to it for as long as you can. It’s not going to last. It will be taken from you. But that’s not the point. The point is that you took your chance, you drank the wine, you took what good you could from the world, and you gave it yours.”

“It’s always the books you don’t have that call to you, you know that. Not the ones already on your shelf. They can wait.”

The idea that what was needed lay before us the whole time is almost as old as the concept of need. The greenest grass may hide beneath your feet.

The sadness in him was an echo of hers, but with it came the extra burden of seeing something precious crushed before you and having no means to defend it.

The greatest puzzle is one not understood until the final piece is set in place. Life, appropriately, can be like that, all the pieces tumbling together in a slow dance until in one last joining of hands epiphany strikes.

That’s the purpose of the story. To say that you can escape from somewhere but you’re always going to leave part of yourself there.”

it’s not the gift of money that’s the greatest—it’s the gift of purpose.