mindfulmindlessness

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The library, Anne had come to think, was an imperfect reflection of something divine, a shadow of the impossible. It was shaped by bias, prej-udice, and held within its pages every human failing. And yet, in its conception and in its ideals there ran an echo of some great song that if it could only be heard would wrap every listener in its beauty and lift them to some higher, unattainable ground.

The violence of the night outside, the horror of seeing her loved ones taken away to uncertain futures, hadn't left Anne. A large part of her still wanted to rage against it all, to demand that Yute and Kerrol use whatever magics they had to make things right. To scream at them for their aimless patience, for their wasting of time among the sleeping shelves whilst outside the book-burners spewed their vitriol, broke glass, and shattered lives. But she stood in silence and when Yute's path took him from her view, she followed.

"This book" —Yute plucked a slim volume from the shelves, seemingly at random-"was written a century ago, by a man of your faith. Heinrich Heine. A poet. He says on page forty-seven, Where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people also.”

The Book That Held Her Heart, Mark Lawrence

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megan lynne

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“It's important that there is a memory, and that it can be visited. That doesn't mean that every memory should be returned to, any more than the existence of a library means you should read every book in it. Exercise discretion. I've walked enough of my own past to know it to be a path that will cut you. Even the softest recollection can conceal a blade, if only for the fact that it is gone, and those moments will never be yours again."

The Book That Held Her Heart, Mark Lawrence

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“(…) pools of sunlight sinking into fields the air darkening how long can you wait your body crowded over with clouds and grasses whole childhoods of grain blown back and forth inside your eyes”

— Joanna Klink, from Excerpts From A Secret Prophecy in “Excerpts From A Secret Prophecy”

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Kushiel’s Dart, Jacqueline Carey

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Kushiel’s Dart, Jaqueline Carey

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Kushiel’s Dart, Jacqueline Carey

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The closing of the strange loop of human selfhood is deeply dependent upon the level-changing leap that is perception, which means categorization, and therefore, the richer and more powerful an organism's categorization equipment is, the more realized and rich will be its self. Conversely, the poorer an organism's repertoire of categories, the more impoverished will be the self, until in the limit there simply is no self at all.

I Am A Strange Loop, Douglas Hofstadter

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The closeness of her against him felt like something he’d needed all his life and never known he was without. A breath drawn after a life of suffocation.

The Book That Wouldn’t Burn, Mark Lawrence

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“We’re all the story we tell about ourselves, silly.” Another wave rocked them. “That’s all anyone ever is—the story they tell, and the stories told about them. Fiction captures more than facts do. That’s why the library keeps it. It’s the most important part of our memories.”

The Book That Wouldn’t Burn, Mark Lawrence

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The Book That Wouldn’t Burn, Mark Lawrence

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“People die, brother. That’s what I’ve learned. Life’s cheap, easily spent. And if there’s any joy to be had it’s in the moments between. So, when you find something that makes you happy you take it with both hands, and you hold on to it for as long as you can. It’s not going to last. It will be taken from you. But that’s not the point. The point is that you took your chance, you drank the wine, you took what good you could from the world, and you gave it yours.”

The Book That Wouldn’t Burn, Mark Lawrence

[mindfulmindlessness]

The Book That Wouldn’t Burn, Mark Lawrence

[mindfulmindlessness]

The Book That Wouldn’t Burn, Mark Lawrence

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“What does nostalgia mean to a child? An abstraction. A standing stone waiting for them in the mist. Walk a path across some decades, any path you like, and the word will gather weight. It will come to you trailing maybes and might-have-beens. Nostalgia is a drug, a knife. Against young skin it carries a dull edge, but time will teach you that nostalgia cuts—and that it’s a blade we cannot keep from applying to our own flesh.”

The Book That Wouldn’t Burn, Mark Lawrence

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“Hurts don’t stop, but they fade into shadows of what they were. That’s sad. That something so vital, something that bit you so deep, can be eroded by time into a story that almost seems like it happened to someone else. Any hurt. The years have taken away her meaning. It lessens us.”

The Book That Wouldn’t Burn, Mark Lawrence

[mindfulmindlessness]

All of us in our secret hearts, in our empty moments of contemplation, stumble into the understanding that nothing matters. There’s a cold shock of realisation and, in that moment, we know that nothing at all is of the least consequence. Ultimately, we’re all just spinning our wheels, seeking to avoid pain until the clock winds down and our time is spent. To give someone purpose is to free them, however briefly, from the spectre of that knowledge.

The Book The Wouldn’t Burn, Mark Lawrence