The God of Lost Words Quotes

“History is told by the victors, isn’t that how it goes? Fight for something and lose, you’re insurrectionists, conspirators, terrorists. Fight for something and win, you’re rebels, freedom fighters, founding fathers. History is a story told in past tense, the best kind of propaganda. What everyone forgets is that, at one point in the story, every villain thinks they are the hero. History happens in the edit.”
― A.J. Hackwith, The God of Lost Words

“Listen. That's the part of the librarian's job that everyone forgets. Listen. Listen to your books, listen to your patrons. Listen to your enemies, even; when they're maddest is when you know you're doing something right. A librarian's job is to listen. A library's job is to be a place where the hopeless can feel seen and heard too.”
― A.J. Hackwith, The God of Lost Words

“Maybe a library isn’t defined by what it holds. Maybe it is defined by what it does.”
― A.J. Hackwith, The God of Lost Words

“A library is people. Just as much as it is books and archives. You want to know the heart of a library, don’t look at its most famous books; look at the people it serves. Who it comforts, who it protects. The heart of a library may be its books, but its soul is its people. Humans and stories, impossible to separate the two.”
― A.J. Hackwith, The God of Lost Words

“If we wait for a landlord who will not eat us for his own benefit we’ll be realmless forever, Rami. Leto told me about this once; it’s called capitalism.”
― A.J. Hackwith, The God of Lost Words

“Humans love to make things complicated. Look at belief. They build whole morality and judgment systems on it—who believes what, believes in the right way, believes strongly enough. It’s so unnecessary. Belief, when you get right down to it, is just a powerful story. Tell a story well, and the reader doesn’t just want it to be true—they know it is. Get enough souls to believe in a story, and you can change the world. Or make one.”
― A.J. Hackwith, The God of Lost Words

“we decide our stories. What happens to you is not the story. The plot is not the story, the conflict is not the story, the world is not the story. The story is you. You, the character; you, the reader; and the liminal watercolor of magic that happens between those two. Love a story, hate a story, tire of a story, all the possible magic a story has is contained between those two immovable, unknowable forces.”
― A.J. Hackwith, The God of Lost Words

“Regret lingers on. Regret fractures our souls into many. Maybe, just maybe, the counterpower to creation isn’t destruction—that’s just entropy, just natural. No, the opposite of creation isn’t destruction; it’s regret. It’s the stories we never tell that carry the most weight.”
― A.J. Hackwith, The God of Lost Words

“Churches gave sanctuary, in my time. To the unwanted, the unloved, and also the criminals, whether they repented or not. I don't see why a library in Hell shouldn't be a kind of church - lord knows that we have enough altars to longing, to regret, to mistakes, here in the stacks. Few souls find their way down here, but if they do, what shelter we can provide, the Library should. Libraries have always been a kind of church, a kind of sanctuary.”
― A.J. Hackwith, The God of Lost Words

“A library does not have a name; a library has all of them.
A library is not a place; a library is a purpose.
A library does not have eyes, a library has I's.”
― A.J. Hackwith, The God of Lost Words

“I won't know the right words..... No writer ever does. The words will be right eventually.”
― A.J. Hackwith, The God of Lost Words

“The patron god of the library is the one who needs it, who claims the necessity of a place of stories and souls and is willing to build it. Sometimes that's the librarians and curators, sometimes that's the storytellers, but sometimes? Sometimes it's just you. You, the reader, who found your wild and winding way to the pages. You have a library inside you, do you not? Stories, told and untold. That is the power of gods.”
― A.J. Hackwith, The God of Lost Words

“I’ve seen enough revolutions in my time to say it with some authority: rebellions are built on love and hope. You can’t reject the status quo unless you are hopeful enough to imagine something better. Of course, that doesn’t make a lot of difference once the killing starts.”
― A.J. Hackwith, The God of Lost Words

“Even the battles you lost are worthy,” Bjorn said. “Winning doesn’t make a warrior; trying to live does that.”
― A.J. Hackwith, The God of Lost Words

“12 CLAIRE History is told by the victors, isn’t that how it goes? Fight for something and lose, you’re insurrectionists, conspirators, terrorists. Fight for something and win, you’re rebels, freedom fighters, founding fathers. History is a story told in past tense, the best kind of propaganda. What everyone forgets is that, at one point in the story, every villain thinks they are the hero. History happens in the edit.”
― A.J. Hackwith, The God of Lost Words

“the third was a perfectly average urban fantasy featuring two brothers and a muscle car.”
― A.J. Hackwith, The God of Lost Words

“It’s not such a ridiculous thing, to be willing to die for an idea. Sometimes, that’s the only thing worth a good death.”
― A.J. Hackwith, The God of Lost Words

“It is important to end well”
― A.J. Hackwith, The God of Lost Words

“I’m afraid too. But I’ve wasted too much time waiting to not be afraid. I’m going to fight. I can be afraid and fight.”
― A.J. Hackwith, The God of Lost Words

“Hold tight to those who have earned your trust”
― A.J. Hackwith, The God of Lost Words

“A brilliant tale performed for an unwilling reader leads to the type of crimes high school literature essays are made of.”
― A.J. Hackwith, The God of Lost Words

“All pockets were best judged by book size, in Claire’s opinion.”
― A.J. Hackwith, The God of Lost Words

“If only it were bloodshed. No, nothing so pleasant. Worse: accounting.”
― A.J. Hackwith, The God of Lost Words

“What happens to you is not the story. The plot is not the story, the conflict is not the story, the world is not the story. The story is you. You, the character; you, the reader; and the liminal watercolor of magic that happens between those two. Love a story, hate a story, tire of a story, all the possible magic a story has is contained between those two immovable, unknowable forces. Everything else—well, it matters. But this is another story.”
― A.J. Hackwith, The God of Lost Words

“Standing in the light now just meant you cast long, deep shadows.”
― A.J. Hackwith, The God of Lost Words