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“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.”
― Mark Lawrence, The Book That Broke the World

“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.”
― Mark Lawrence, The Book That Broke the World

“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”
― Mark Lawrence, The Book That Broke the World

“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.”
― Mark Lawrence, The Book That Broke the World

“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”
― Mark Lawrence, The Book That Broke the World

“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”
― Mark Lawrence, The Book That Broke the World

“Fairness is something others try to impose at the surface level once they’ve fixed all the foundations in their favour.”
― Mark Lawrence, The Book That Broke the World

“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”
― Mark Lawrence, The Book That Broke the World

“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”
― Mark Lawrence, The Book That Broke the World

“He sighed and, after a long pause, admitted, “I worry.â€� “You seem to have summed up your existence in two words, Arpix.”
― Mark Lawrence, The Book That Broke the World

“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.”
― Mark Lawrence, The Book That Broke the World

“I already told you: we choose sides with our gut. The words are to make us feel better afterwards.”
― Mark Lawrence, The Book That Broke the World

“The truth, like oxygen, is necessary if we are to live. And, like oxygen, if it is all we get, it will kill us.”
― Mark Lawrence, The Book That Broke the World

“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.”
― Mark Lawrence, The Book That Broke the World

“Livira was never sure when it was that Malar died, only that her hands were on him and that he was not alone.”
― Mark Lawrence, The Book That Broke the World

“What was life if not a song sung to the music of the past for the future to hear?”
― Mark Lawrence, The Book That Broke the World

“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.â€� The Basics of Deductive Logic, by I. P. Franchise”
― Mark Lawrence, The Book That Broke the World

“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.”
― Mark Lawrence, The Book That Broke the World

“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.â€� 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.”
― Mark Lawrence, The Book That Broke the World

“Livira hadn’t so much disdained the library’s rules as wholly failed to acknowledge their existence.”
― Mark Lawrence, The Book That Broke the World

“An execution brings with it moments of great focus and decisions of consequence. It’s a time for reflection. So grab that mirror! How much neck do you dare to bare? This reign of terror the word is ‘laceâ€�. We’re seeing big ruffs for the ladies, frothy jabots for the lords.

—Dressing for the Guillotine, by Madame Gâteaux”
― Mark Lawrence, The Book That Broke the World

“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.”
― Mark Lawrence, The Book That Broke the World

“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.”
― Mark Lawrence, The Book That Broke the World

“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. “Did you ever meet someone clever who was truly happy?”
― Mark Lawrence, The Book That Broke the World

“She hadn’t been entirely imprisoned though—some aspects of her had leaked to the surface. Had she also completed her book? Written the final chapter with a white hand? Had she found some set of narrative and thematic threads to bind the disparate stories into a cohesive whole?”
― Mark Lawrence, The Book That Broke the World

“She circled Jella, hound to prey, peppering the air with her objections. The lethargy that normally wrapped her fell away. Arpix had long noticed that whenever she had something to complain about Jost found new energy from somewhere. The rest of the time she had a tendency to survive on the labour of others.”
― Mark Lawrence, The Book That Broke the World

“The day’s brightness fingered in through narrow slits high in the walls, turning dust motes to gold.”
― Mark Lawrence, The Book That Broke the World

“his old life looked small and blinkered. Still, he wanted it back. He wanted his quiet, ordered days back, growing old among the towering shelves, exploring the space between two covers while sitting in a comfortable chair, with a hot cup of chai within arm’s reach.”
― Mark Lawrence, The Book That Broke the World

“If you pick the solution you think is best out of a host of possibilities then everyone is going to have a slightly different answer to the problem. You need support, so you accept a few small changes and move to someone else’s solution. Now there are two of you behind one idea. You need more. The process repeats and repeats. You see people coalescing behind an idea you hate, and it becomes more important to be lined up behind something vaguely palatable that has the numbers to oppose them than it does to get exactly the solution you wanted. In the end there are two solutions, aligned against each other. And in the library’s case, two ideologies and an uneasy truce.”
― Mark Lawrence, The Book That Broke the World

“It’s curious that ghosts, spectres, and spirits are so often depicted as transparent when no one is more opaque to the living than are the dead. Biographers offer keyholes through which the most famous may be viewed. Historians poke peepholes through the veil of years. For most though, we have nothing but what dust might sift down from the attic of memory.”
― Mark Lawrence, The Book That Broke the World