The Book That Broke the World

The greater tragedy of our world is not the victims of cruelty, but that so many of those victims would, given the opportunity, stand in the shoes of their oppressors and wield the same whip with equal enthusiasm.

Reading is a dangerous sport, never more so than when we turn the page and find ourselves there among the lines. Blunt Instruments, by Joshua Semple

It turns out that the most important lesson that history teaches us is that history should not teach us. Lessons should be learned, not taught. Wisdom has to be earned, and no number of words can wrap the gift of knowledge sufficiently to keep it safe from misuse. The definition of madness is repeating the same action and expecting a different result.

There is, inside me, an unanswered ache, small but constant, caused by no particular trial or tribulation, simply by the burden of existence, the effort of holding aloft my own sky. Each of us is Atlas and why some are crushed and others effortless is a mystery whose answer will not translate into my tongue. Existential, by Jesper Lodin

Wisdom is difficult to write down, harder to find amid the ocean of the unwise, and, when found, next to impossible to learn from a page. The wisdom to use knowledge must be earned rather than given. That takes time.

There are few journeys more painful than going back to a place you haven’t seen in many years. If you are lucky, it will have changed beyond recognition and, by having done so, will allow you to ignore the still larger changes in yourself. No Returns: A Librarian’s Tale, by Ook Longarm

One of the worst things about humans is everything. But I’ll tell you what’s ten times worse than a human . . . two humans. And what’s ten times worse than two humans? You’ve guessed it: one child. A Complete History of Humanity, by Hubert Duck

I already told you: we choose sides with our gut. The words are to make us feel better afterwards.

The wait for the world to tell you that you’re special can be a long and lonely one. Better to get off your arse and let it know that you are.

Memory should perhaps be an art, not the blunt refusal to surrender a single moment of experience, but a curation in which consideration is given to what has space on the shelves and what is consigned to the midden

They would still be scars on their memory, but scars were meant to be lived with.

She loved the library, or at least she loved books. She valued the knowledge and the passion they held. The memory of races and species beyond knowing. The culture and achievements of untold millennia.

What was life if not a song sung to the music of the past for the future to hear?

He sighed and, after a long pause, admitted, “I worry.” “You seem to have summed up your existence in two words, Arpix.

One fine day Truth met with Lies upon a mountainside with all of Hantalon spread beneath them: field, and town, and city stretching to the sparkle of the sea. With a disapproving frown, Truth asked of Lies how many she had slain. And true to her nature she answered with a lie. “More than you, brother.” The Basics of Deductive Logic, by I. P. Franchise

And, in the end, Arpix had come to the conclusion that she was the breath that he hadn’t understood was required to keep him from suffocating.

The majority of each breath we take is gas of types that will not sustain us. The truth, like oxygen, is necessary if we are to live. And, like oxygen, if it is all we get, it will kill us.

Fairness is something others try to impose at the surface level once they’ve fixed all the foundations in their favour.

The truth, like oxygen, is necessary if we are to live. And, like oxygen, if it is all we get, it will kill us.

Reason is fragile. Easy to fracture and hard to mend. Without reason, all things that matter fall apart.

Mary understood the concept of momentum as it appeared in mechanics, both classical and quantum. She had, however, not known that it applied to her own life until she realised how fast she was going and stepped on the brakes as hard as she could.

Livira was never sure when it was that Malar died, only that her hands were on him and that he was not alone.

It’s hard for the timeless to perceive the flow. Hard to see the change from this to that. Everything simply is. And yet, contrary to my nature, I struggle to do just that. I look into the current.” He raised a hand to clutch the back of his neck, a curiously alive gesture, at odds with the animated statue that he had first seemed. “And it is difficult for the timely, those carried in the flow, bubbling to its surface, borne along, ultimately drowned in it, to see the crystalline glory of eternity, reflected and refracted through many dimensions, perfect in its imperfections. Language is also caught in the flow and ever-changing. It lacks the capacity to exchange those experiences between us.

Livira hadn’t so much disdained the library’s rules as wholly failed to acknowledge their existence.

No matter how nuanced debate might be at the start, if lots of people are involved then it ultimately condenses around two poles deemed to be irreconcilable. And then you have your war.

The urge to record was nearly as old as memory itself. What was life if not a song sung to the music of the past for the future to hear?

People don't like a host of options. No matter how nuanced debate might be at the start, if lots of people are involved then it ultimately condenses around two poles deemed to be irreconcilable.

For grief the only true cure is patience. For patience there is no cure.-Assured Remedies, by Tabetha Hawthorn

relationships were as much a part of people as water was a part of blood. Without water, blood was just a red dust. In his library life, Arpix had come close to cutting himself off to a dangerous level, to becoming dust, moved only by the wind rather than by the pulsing of a heart.