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

by Mark Lawrence

The Soldier had a quote: Steel demands to be used. Which, according to him, meant that any weapon aches for violence and sooner or later that ache will pervade the one who owns it, until at last the weapon owns them.

Kindness carries a weight; it’s a burden all its own when you have nothing.

Some people strive so hard for centre stage—bleed themselves dry for your attention—and when they finally get there and the lights find them, they discover that all they had to say is ‘I was here.’

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.

People can be good or bad one by one. Society is almost always awful.

“The longer the distance over which you conduct your murders the more likely they are to happen.

Anyway, the fire-limit is when a people become advanced enough to start a fire but lack the resources to put it out when it spreads.”

“One of the earliest philosophers told us you can’t step into the same river twice. The library taught me you can’t read the same book twice either—you’re the river.”