Quotes from The Library at Mount Char

Scott Hawkins ·  390 pages

Rating: (19.6K votes)


“Steve sighed, wishing for a cigarette. “The Buddha teaches respect for all life.” “Oh.” She considered this. “Are you a Buddhist?” “No. I’m an asshole. But I keep trying.”
― Scott Hawkins, quote from The Library at Mount Char


“Peace of mind is not the absence of conflict, but the ability to cope with it.”
― Scott Hawkins, quote from The Library at Mount Char


“The only real escape from hell is to conquer it.”
― Scott Hawkins, quote from The Library at Mount Char


“Buddhism, he thought, is a clean religion. You never heard about how eight people—two of them children—just got blown the fuck up as part of the long-standing conflict between Buddhists and whoever.”
― Scott Hawkins, quote from The Library at Mount Char


“Your affection is not meaningless to me, puny one. I shall devour you another day.”
― Scott Hawkins, quote from The Library at Mount Char



“As illustrated in any number of footnotes, men are almost always 50 to 60 percent dumber in matters involving their crotch.”
― Scott Hawkins, quote from The Library at Mount Char


“Carolyn – I need you to go back into America. We need an innocent heart. We will offer it to Nobununga when he arrives. Do you think you can handle that?”
“An innocent heart? In America?” She hesitated.”
― Scott Hawkins, quote from The Library at Mount Char


“How, he wondered, did humanity ever get along without duct tape?”
― Scott Hawkins, quote from The Library at Mount Char


“Aren’t you violating the building codes? Or the laws of physics?”
― Scott Hawkins, quote from The Library at Mount Char


“That’s the risk in working to be a dangerous person,” she said. “There’s always the chance you’ll run into someone who’s better at it than you.”
― Scott Hawkins, quote from The Library at Mount Char



“I was just wondering why you did that. Pretend to be a dipshit, I mean.” The president grinned. “Prolly the same fuckin’ reason you do.”
― Scott Hawkins, quote from The Library at Mount Char


“Steve looked through the scope. The house was quiet now. Thin trickles of smoke leaked from the windows. As he watched, Mrs McGillicutty staggered outside. She was bloody and dazed, but very much alive. “Hey, there’s the old lady! What’s that she’s holding?”
Carolyn took the scope and looked for herself, then handed it back. “Muffins. She’s got muffins.”
― Scott Hawkins, quote from The Library at Mount Char


“OK, think of it this way. Do you know how microwaves work?”
“No.”
“It’s based on microwaves.”
“Oh, wait. I just remembered. I do know how microwaves work, and what you’re saying is bullshit.”
“Fine. It isn’t microwaves.”
― Scott Hawkins, quote from The Library at Mount Char


“As the days and weeks and seasons wore on he found himself repeating this nothing, not wanting to. Gradually he came to understand that this particular nothing was all that he could really say now. He chanted it to himself in cell blocks and dingy apartments, recited it like a litany, ripped himself to rags against the sharp and ugly poetry of it. It echoed down the grimy hallways and squandered moments of his life, the answer to every question, the lyric of all songs.”
― Scott Hawkins, quote from The Library at Mount Char


“No real thing can be so perfect as memory, and she will need a perfect thing if she is to survive. She will warm herself on the memory of you when there is nothing else, and be sustained.” Rubbing”
― Scott Hawkins, quote from The Library at Mount Char



“We’re still waiting on the lab work.”
“It was a shotgun what did it, though. The same one?”
Dorn popped an eyebrow. “Good eye. You in forensics?”
“Not really.” He had killed a lot of people with shotguns.”
― Scott Hawkins, quote from The Library at Mount Char


“He understood, I think. The only real escape from hell is to conquer it.”
― Scott Hawkins, quote from The Library at Mount Char


“Some people have an enormous capacity for feeling guilt, deserved or otherwise.”
― Scott Hawkins, quote from The Library at Mount Char


“Stay away from windows. And if you see people with tentacles, stay away. Don’t let them touch you.” Harshen”
― Scott Hawkins, quote from The Library at Mount Char


“Are you a Buddhist?"
"No, I'm an asshole. But I keep trying.”
― Scott Hawkins, quote from The Library at Mount Char



“Steve didn’t like the stairs. It bothered him that they hung in midair, unsupported. Steve said this “weirded him out."

This wasn’t surprising. The list of things that Steve found objectionable was long and growing. It included the Library itself (“How can the furniture hang on the ceiling like that? It’s creepy.”); the jade floor (“Jade isn’t supposed to glow.”); the apothecary (“What the hell is that thing? I’m out of here.”); the armory (David’s trophies made him throw up); the Pelapi language (“It sounds like cats fighting”); her robes (“Did you borrow those from Death?” She hadn’t.); and, of course, Carolyn herself.”
― Scott Hawkins, quote from The Library at Mount Char


“Erwin especially relished that last phrase. ‘Like we was morons.’ He only trotted it out on special occasions.”
― Scott Hawkins, quote from The Library at Mount Char


“A few moments later Marcus was a member of a fairly exclusive club. He had no idea how many people had been firsthand witnesses to not one but two lion attacks, but he thought that the number would be very, very small. Gangsta, baby, he thought, and wet himself.”
― Scott Hawkins, quote from The Library at Mount Char


“Jennifer, like Father, had something of a fetish for office supplies. A”
― Scott Hawkins, quote from The Library at Mount Char


“For all intents and purposes, the power of the Library is infinite. Tonight we’re going to settle who inherits control of reality.”
― Scott Hawkins, quote from The Library at Mount Char



“It echoed down the grimy hallways and squandered moments of his life, the answer to every question, the lyric of all songs.”
― Scott Hawkins, quote from The Library at Mount Char


“Before I move closer towards my vision of the Buddha, I would respectfully plead that you adopt a stance of compassion towards the small things of this world.” He”
― Scott Hawkins, quote from The Library at Mount Char


“I’m making progress.” He turned and rumbled to Naga in the language of the hunt: “Thank you for not eating me today.” Naga’s voice came from the darkness: “Your affection is not meaningless to me, puny one. I shall devour you another day.”
― Scott Hawkins, quote from The Library at Mount Char


About the author

Scott Hawkins
Born place: The United States
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“We all own a beast called anger. It”
― Sara Pennypacker, quote from Pax


“Nothing is more painful to the human mind than, after the feelings have been worked up by a quick succession of events, the dead calmness of inaction and certainty which follows and deprives the soul both of hope and fear.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, quote from Frankestein


“In the pillared bowl atop the tower, a great pyre blazed, casting a golden glow over the granite walls. The bloody body of a man painted with the white four-pointed star of Kimisara hung by his neck below.
“I think that Kimisar you saw is still here,” Alex observed dryly.”
― Erin Beaty, quote from The Traitor's Kiss


“We can't help the way we're born. We can't help what we are, only what life we choose to make for ourselves.”
― Leigh Bardugo, quote from Wonder Woman: Warbringer


“Sometimes you don't know what you want until you just do. It hits you like a wave, knocks you underwater, and when you surface, all you want is this one thing. It's like gasping for air.”
― Jessica Pennington, quote from Love Songs & Other Lies


Interesting books

Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture
(9.4K)
Highly Illogical Behavior
(10.2K)
Highly Illogical Beh...
by John Corey Whaley
The Girl in 6E
(13.7K)
The Girl in 6E
by A.R. Torre
War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning
(4.4K)
War Is a Force That...
by Chris Hedges
Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution
(5.9K)
Origins: Fourteen Bi...
by Neil deGrasse Tyson
Leaves of Grass: The First (1855) Edition
(70.9K)
Leaves of Grass: The...
by Walt Whitman

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.