Gutenberg's Apprentice Quotes

“Just as the sailor yearns for port, the writer longs for the last line.”
― Alix Christie, Gutenberg's Apprentice

“He had cast a plain square shaft the same size as a letter m, yet just a fraction shorter than their letters. When slipped between them it would make a gap, because it was too short to take the ink.”
― Alix Christie, Gutenberg's Apprentice

“the higher they reached toward heaven’s stars, the farther their feet lifted from God’s earth.”
― Alix Christie, Gutenberg's Apprentice

“What needs has any man, besides those needs we share with beasts? And then I knew: he has to read.”
― Alix Christie, Gutenberg's Apprentice

“Cusanus preached each man’s capacity to feel God’s touch, regardless of his birth, his wealth, even his creed. Man was himself a pilgrim mirror, catching and reflecting back the rays of God’s own essence.”
― Alix Christie, Gutenberg's Apprentice

“Theophilus. It is a sin to shirk the gifts that God has given.”
― Alix Christie, Gutenberg's Apprentice

“Yet in those days the only full texts of the Bible were in cloisters, not on pulpits. Here and there a parish had received one as a gift, but these were locked up in their sacristies.”
― Alix Christie, Gutenberg's Apprentice

“The Bible was the only book they could hope to sell in quantity that did not need approval from the church, so long as they adhered to the accepted version. Yet from the start it was a risk in every way—not”
― Alix Christie, Gutenberg's Apprentice

“When you get to my age, Peter,” he said as they turned toward Mainz, “you do begin to wonder. If it really is a gift from God—and not a curse sent up from hell.”
― Alix Christie, Gutenberg's Apprentice

“The valley of the Rhine peeled off to either side in banks of green and gold, and farther up outcroppings rose, perched high above the river like so many gnomes. An ancient peaty smell mingled sickeningly with the pomades and the late-September sweat of bodies crammed together at the rail.”
― Alix Christie, Gutenberg's Apprentice