Robin Sloan · 288 pages
Rating: (139.4K votes)
“Walking the stacks in a library, dragging your fingers across the spines -- it's hard not to feel the presence of sleeping spirits.”
― Robin Sloan, quote from Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
“After that, the book will fade, the way all books fade in your mind. But I hope you will remember this:
A man walking fast down a dark lonely street. Quick steps and hard breathing, all wonder and need. A bell above a door and the tinkle it makes. A clerk and a ladder and warm golden light, and then: the right book exactly, at exactly the right time.”
― Robin Sloan, quote from Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
“Your life must be an open city, with all sorts of ways to wander in.”
― Robin Sloan, quote from Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
“Neel takes a sharp breath and I know exactly what it means. It means: I have waited my whole life to walk through a secret passage built into a bookshelf.”
― Robin Sloan, quote from Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
“He has the strangest expression on his face- the emotional equivalent of 404 PAGE NOT FOUND.”
― Robin Sloan, quote from Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
“You know, I'm really starting to think the whole world is just a patchwork quilt of crazy little cults, all with their own secret spaces, their own records, their own rules.”
― Robin Sloan, quote from Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
“I've never listened to an audiobook before, and I have to say it's a totally different experience. When you read a book, the story definitely takes place in your head. When you listen, it seems to happen in a little cloud all around it, like a fuzzy knit cap pulled down over your eyes”
― Robin Sloan, quote from Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
“...this is exactly the kind of store that makes you want to buy a book about a teenage wizard. This is the kind of store that makes you want to be a teenage wizard.”
― Robin Sloan, quote from Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
“All the secrets of the world worth knowing are hiding in plain sight.”
― Robin Sloan, quote from Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
“But I kept at it with the help-wanted ads. My standards were sliding swiftly. At first I had insisted I would only work at a company with a mission I believed in. Then I thought maybe it would be fine as long as I was learning something new. After that I decided it just couldn't be evil. Now I was carefully delineating my personal definition of evil.”
― Robin Sloan, quote from Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
“Some of them are working hard indeed."
"What are they doing?"
"My boy!" he said, eyebrows raised. As if nothing could be more obvious: "They are reading.”
― Robin Sloan, quote from Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
“Have they all bought Kindles? I have one, and I use it most nights. I always imagine the books staring and whispering, Traitor! - but come on, I have a lot of free first chapters to get through.”
― Robin Sloan, quote from Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
“So I guess you could say Neel owes me a few favors, except that so many favors have passed between us now that they are no longer distinguishable as individual acts, just a bright haze of loyalty. Our friendship is a nebula.”
― Robin Sloan, quote from Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
“If this sounds impressive to you, you’re over thirty.”
― Robin Sloan, quote from Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
“Why does the typical adventuring group consist of a wizard, a warrior, and a rogue, anyway? It should really be a wizard, a warrior, and a rich guy. Otherwise who's going to pay for all the swords and spells and hotel rooms?”
― Robin Sloan, quote from Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
“He asked <...> Rosemary, why do you love books so much?
And I said, Well, I don't know <...> I suppose I love them because they're quiet, and I can take them to the park.”
― Robin Sloan, quote from Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
“...I can’t stop squirming. If fidgets were Wikipedia edits, I would have completely revamped the entry on guilt by now, and translated it into five new languages.”
― Robin Sloan, quote from Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
“Imagination runs out. But it makes sense, right? We probably just imagine things based on what we already know, and we run out of analogies in the thirty-first century.”
― Robin Sloan, quote from Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
“I sit up straight and do the first thing a person is supposed to do in an emergency, which is send a text message.”
― Robin Sloan, quote from Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
“Let me give you some advice: make friends with a millionaire when he's a friendless sixth-grader.”
― Robin Sloan, quote from Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
“Kat bought a New York Times but couldn’t figure out how to operate it, so now she’s fiddling with her phone.”
― Robin Sloan, quote from Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
“This girl has the spark of life. This is my primary filter for new friends (girl- and otherwise) and the highest compliment I can pay. I've tried many times to figure out exactly what ignites it -- what cocktail of characteristics come together in the cold, dark cosmos to form a star. I know it's mostly in the face -- not just the eyes, but the brow, the cheeks, the mouth, and the micromuscles that connect them all.
Kat's micromuscles are very attractive.”
― Robin Sloan, quote from Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
“What do you seek in these shelves?”
― Robin Sloan, quote from Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
“The thinnest tendrils of dawn are creeping in from the east. People in New York are softly starting to tweet.”
― Robin Sloan, quote from Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
“Have you ever played Maximum Happy Imagination?"
"Sounds like a Japanese game show."
Kat straightens her shoulders. "Okay, we're going to play. To start, imagine the future. The good future. No nuclear bombs. Pretend you're a science fiction writer."
Okay: "World government... no cancer... hover-boards."
"Go further. What's the good future after that?"
"Spaceships. Party on Mars."
"Further."
"Star Trek. Transporters. You can go anywhere."
"Further."
"I pause a moment, then realize: "I can't."
Kat shakes her head. "It's really hard. And that's, what, a thousand years? What comes after that? What could possibly come after that? Imagination runs out. But it makes sense, right? We probably just imagine things based on what we already know, and we run out of analogies in the thirty-first century.”
― Robin Sloan, quote from Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
“Her home is the burrow of a bibliophile hobbit -– low-ceilinged, close-walled, and brimming over with books.”
― Robin Sloan, quote from Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
“The right book exactly, at exactly the right time.”
― Robin Sloan, quote from Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
“I walk alone in the darkness and wonder how a person would begin to determine the circumference of the earth. I have no idea. I’d probably just google it.”
― Robin Sloan, quote from Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
“When you read a book, the story definitely happens inside your head. When you listen, it seems to happen in a little cloud all around it, like a fuzzy knit cap pulled down over your eyes.”
― Robin Sloan, quote from Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
“Are there sexual fetishes that involve books? There must be. I try not to imagine how they might work.”
― Robin Sloan, quote from Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
Robin Sloan
Born place: in The United States
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“It is time to venture out of the comforting land of either/or opposites and travel into the uncertain territory of both/and.”
― Diane Schoemperlen, quote from Our Lady of the Lost and Found: A Novel of Mary, Faith, and Friendship
“How grave a disappointment it must be to our great President, who has exerted himself so to bring the German people to reason, to make them understand the horror that they alone have brought deliberately upon the world! Alas! Far from it. Indeed, they have attempted with insidious propaganda to undermine the morale of our troops….” A little storm of muttered epithets went through the room. The Reverend Dr. Skinner elevated his chubby pink palms and smiled benignantly…"to undermine the morale of our troops; so that the most stringent regulations have had to be made by the commanding general to prevent it. Indeed, my friends, I very much fear that we stopped too soon in our victorious advance; that Germany should have been utterly crushed. But all we can do is watch and wait, and abide by the decision of those great men who in a short time will be gathered together at the Conference at Paris….”
― John Dos Passos, quote from Three Soldiers
“The back of her neck smelled like a parakeet’s tummy, sweet hay and fluff.”
― quote from Once a Runner
“Sure, okay, I'll pick up some cat litter. Anything else?"
"Watch your back, G." Then she hung up.
Hero paused in her sobbing to look at me quizzically. "Why does your mom want cat litter? You guys don't even have a cat."
"She uses it for..." I searched my brain madly, but all I could come up with was "teaching."
"She uses cat litter to teach English?"
I nodded. "She's kind of unconventional in her methods."
Hero frowned. "But how does she use it?"
The girl was relentless when she fixated on something. "Um, when their papers are really bad, she gives them a little bag of cat litter. It's her way of telling them their writing is crap." I laughed. "She's kooky.”
― Jody Gehrman, quote from Confessions of a Triple Shot Betty
“Throughout my life I have seen, without one exception, narrow-shouldered men performing innumerable idiotic acts, brutalizing their fellows, and corrupting souls by every means. They call the motive for their actions: fame.”
― Comte de Lautréamont, quote from Maldoror and the Complete Works
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