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

by Mark Lawrence

‘Nostalgia’s a dangerous thing.

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.’

When the great chimneys of outdated industry are brought to ground it is a spectacle that draws thousands of eyes. The muted explosion, the moment of doubt, the inevitable collapse that seems slow only because of the sheer scale of the structure. When great chimneys are built, the interest is considerably more muted. Perhaps it is just a matter of timing. Appetite for Destruction, by Rose L. Axe

Popular literature is wont to make considerable song and dance concerning the weight of a crown being greater than the sum of its constituent materials. But this is true of rank in general, of medals in particular, of many words, and especially of names. The word ‘gift’ carries its own weight. Take an item of even moderate value and wrap about it some fraction of an ounce of festival paper – the scales will hardly flutter. Set the word ‘gift’ upon it, and the person who receives it may stagger beneath the added burden. The Secret to a Successful Saturnalia, by Soton Sloth

‘Training isn’t the real thing. Books aren’t either. Probably worth remembering that now you’re a librarian. Take your nose out of those pages long enough to live some life rather than reading about other people doing it.’

Time can stutter, it can drag, crawl, run, race, and, on occasion, fly. But its favourite form of locomotion has always been to skip. Few lives are lived without the punctuation of moments when we realize with sudden shock that a year, two years, maybe two dozen, have got behind us, sneaking by without permission and propelling us into a future we hardly imagined. From the River to the Sea, by Mercury Wells

… recommend a three-hundred-gallon barrel. Fill to one-third of its depth with manure. Cows are an excellent source, their ordure being both copious and easy to pour. The remaining volume should be filled with urine. In times of tension, recruit others to the effort. The task will take a single person at least a year, and an additional six months of fermenting before the process of extracting saltpetre can begin. Brew Your Own War, by Redding Sharp

It’s in the nature of humans to want to belong to a group, to want to be accepted, appreciated, and needed. What is most frightening about their kind are the sacrifices they are prepared to make in order to become part of such a tribe, clique, sect, sewing circle, cult, or book club. Reason and morality are often at the top of the list of what must be surrendered as part of the club fees. Truth becomes a collective property, an adaptable shield used to shelter the in-group from those outside. Dogs, on the other hand, are great. Training Your Labrador, by Barbara Timberhut

Many objects are an inherent invitation. A sharp edge invites you to cut. A coin wishes to be spent. A sword begs for violence. A door requires that you try to open it. Temptation: A Novel In Three Parts, by Summer Applebaum

‘Old dogs can teach us new tricks. An old dog shuffles on, relentlessly happy, still interested in the world. Even when they’re too worn out to run it’s still there – no bitterness, no regret, no looking back, just on to the next thing with amiable confusion. Dogs are nothing but good.’

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 realize 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

She saw them everywhere. She saw them dancing on fence-tops, along old gutters, between the pegs on the washing line. She called them the ‘dancers’, but then ‘angels’ because Mam said that was proper if she couldn’t stop talking about them. ‘During the Dance’, by Mark Lawrence

It’s a rare thing that lives up to expectations. First kisses are rare. Remembering a Life, Methuselah Enochson

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. Bush Tucker, by Ancoo Walkabout

Kindness is a language in and of itself. In order for it to be understood it requires that both the speaker and the listener be trained in its syntax. Linguistics: A Study of the Heart, by Kian Najmechi

Cain begat Enoch, and Enoch begat Jaspeth and Irad. And Jaspeth, who had his whole life long walked on eggshells around the shame of his grandfather’s invention – fratricide – agreed with Irad at an early age that neither would kill the other. Murder in the Family: A Novel in Six Parts, by Captain Noah

The art of skipping stones across a lake entails the alignment of many factors: the stillness of the water, the smoothness and symmetry of the stone, the suppleness of the wrist, and the rotation imparted to the projectile at the moment of its release. What is uniformly overlooked by the amateur, however, is the selection of the places where stone touches water. Place your steps wisely in all things. Time especially. A Mill Pond, by John Constable

A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. This old truism becomes more interesting when one considers how it scales. Is a lot of knowledge a very, very dangerous thing? In Figure 46, knowledge is plotted along the X-axis, and danger along the Y-axis. It’s immediately obvious from the resulting curve that … Charting the Ephemeral, by Dr J. Evans Pilchard, PhD

‘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.’

… certainly no fornication! The essence of a library is that new freedom of thought is balanced by new restrictions on behaviour. Voices must be kept low, food is not allowed, running in the aisles is forbidden. And, though it saddens me to have to repeat myself in this matter: certainly no … Library Etiquette: Volume 6, by Mrs Emalli Post

‘We can never go back. Time doesn’t work that way. Not once you’ve stepped into the current.’

The fact that opposites attract is a scientific truth concerning charge and magnetism. One should not expect to extend the same principle to marital relationships with success. And yet … Strange Bedfellows, by Alexander Cosy

Many authorities declare the library to have been Irad’s work – but in truth it is the work of Irad and of Jaspeth and of neither of them. The structure that we are familiar with – or at least as familiar as a man may be with a possibly infinite building that reaches into many realities, many worlds, and many times – is something that neither brother would claim as their own. It is both far less than Irad’s vision, and far more than Jaspeth would have exist. It is, like every good compromise, displeasing to all parties concerned. The New New Testament, by various authors

There’s no one temperature at which a book spontaneously combusts. Books vary as much in their combustion as they do in their contents. But the truth is that any words set upon a flammable substrate have a limited shelf-life, as do the shelves themselves if they are also vulnerable to fire. Flames are ever hungry and will find a path to their food. Written in the Stars, by Ekatri Hagsdaughter

‘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. ‘Three Billy Goats Gruff’, a postdoctoral thesis by Arnold Grim

… very dear friend of mine. Elias, when not consumed with his scientific research, captained his own great vessel out on the Black Sea. He was often wont to speculate on any and all particulars relating to the nature of time. His insights wandered from commentary on the first accurate chronometers that permitted navigation of the oceans, to the vagaries of both arrivals and of meetings, which are, he always claimed, governed by an arithmetic more fundamental than that of particles, planets, or pulsars. Great Sailing Ships of History: An Architectural Comparison, by A. E. Canulus

The last words a person speaks are given additional weight. Some legal systems codify that gravitas into the statutes, allowing evidence from the deathbed greater import. But, often as not, the last words to pass our lips do so without the burden of knowing no more will follow. They are a random line from a random page in a novel that believes it will be completed. Just imagine what … In Memoriam: The Things I Remembered to Forget, by Nicholas Hayes

Translation is a powerful art requiring great intellect. It is not a process that can be conducted without bias. The page is regarded through multiple lenses, including those of the author, audience, and translator. Each brings something new to the text. The same sentences, pressed from one language and culture into the language and realm of another, can lead to war or to peace, with the difference sometimes dependent on the slimmest thread of reason. Babel, by Josiah Maddie

It is often said that there’s always a bigger fish. The universe, however, prefers cycles to stretches. There is in fact a biggest fish. What is true is that there is always something that will feast upon the feaster. The biggest of fish are ultimately devoured by many small ones. An Angler’s Companion, by J. R. Hartley

You can’t go back. Time is a river and there’s no swimming against it. You can’t go back. Yesterday does not wait for you. The past is on fire. What you find when you return to it will be ashes. The School Reunion, by Ian Evans