Mark Lawrence

The Book That Wouldn't Burn

Victoria Justice

The knowledge that he couldn't possibly read all the books on offer put a peculiar pressure on choosing his next read. There must be diamonds out there, the best book in a thousand, the best book in a million, and surely he didn't want to waste his time reading one that was merely adequate when he could be reading one of those diamonds? So instead, he often wasted his time hunting for a read instead of reading.

Laura Dobie

Kindness carries a weight; it's a burden all its own when you have nothing. Some undeniable part of Livira wanted to bite the hands that offered so much so freely. Pride is stupid, pride is blind, but pride is also the backbone that runs through us: without pride there's no spring-back, no resilience.

There are moments in life when you know with a great and unshakeable certainty that everything will change.

Her memory was essentially infallible as as facts were concerned, but emotion had a tendency ti dry like ink and cease ti glisten. It needed to be captured as close to the moment as possible.

Any book worth its ink must, she thought, have something I'd thebauthor held between the lines. There were, she believed, enough parts if enough people on the library's shelves to repopulate a world many times over, if only they could be correctly assembled.

Secrets always seemed to escape if given space. One person could hold a secret tight ti their chest with both hands. When it was two, or three, or four people it was as if that secret had to be tossed back and forth between them, creating many chances to drop it.

"Hurt's 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 lessons us."

Life's cheap, easily spent. And if there's any joy to be hand its 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 always the books you don't have that call to you, you know that. Not the ones already on your shelf. They can wait."

"That's all anyone ever is - the story they tell, and the stories told about them. Fiction captures more than facts do."

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