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181 " Everyone spends nights on the floor of their closet during grad school. "
― Erin Morgenstern , The Starless Sea
182 " The painter spends her time in solitude and contemplation categorizing losses and regrets trying to determine if there was ever anything she could have done to prevent any of them or if they simply passed through her life and out again like waves upon a shore. "
183 " Each of us has our own path, Mr Rawlins. Symbols are for interpretation, not definition. "
184 " Reading a novel, he supposes, is like playing a game where all the choices have been made for you ahead of time by someone who is much better at this particular game. "
185 " He tells her things he’s never told anyone. About the man who broke his heart in such a long, drawn out process that he couldn’t discern hurt from love and how whenever he tries to sort out how it feels now, long after the end of it the feeling is just a void. "
186 " He believes in books, he thinks as he leaves the room. That much he knows for sure. "
187 " Oh, no, thanks, though. I’m agnostopagan.” The Keeper cocks his head questioningly. “Spiritual but not religious,” Zachary clarifies. He doesn’t say what he is thinking, which is that his church is held-breath story listening and late-night-concert ear-ringing rapture and perfect-boss fight-button pressing. That his religion is buried in the silence of freshly fallen snow, in a carefully crafted cocktail, in between the pages of a book somewhere after the beginning but before the ending. "
188 " Drank rosemary for remembrance. Looked for a cat. Danced with the king of the wild things. Excellent-smelling man told me a story in the dark. Cat found me. "
189 " Is it the way it is in the book? He aches to know but he also suspects real places are never properly captured in words. There is always more. "
190 " Everyone is part of a story, what they want is to be part of something worth recording. It’s that fear of mortality "
191 " The wind howls after him as he leaves in fear of what is to come, but a mortal cannot understand the wishes of the wind no matter how loud it cries and so these final warnings go unheeded. "
192 " Move through this,” Simon advises him. “Let it move through you and then let it go. "
193 " It is a sanctuary for storytellers and storykeepers and storylovers. They eat and sleep and dream surrounded by chronicles and histories and myths. Some stay for hours or days before returning to the world above but others remain for weeks or years, living in shared or private chambers and spending their hours reading or studying or writing, discussing and creating with their fellow residents or working in solitude. "
194 " He can’t even think how to describe it. It’s like an art museum and an overflowing library were relocated into a subway system. "
195 " Was he a sentiment hanging unspoken or a path not taken or a closed door left unopened? Or was he a deer, glimpsed amongst the trees and then gone, disturbing not a single branch in his departure? The stag is a shot left untaken. An opportunity lost. Stolen like a kiss. In these new forgetful times with their changed ways sometimes the stag will pause a moment longer. He waits though once he never waited, would never dream to wait or wait to dream. He waits now. For someone to take the shot. For someone to pierce his heart. To know he is remembered. "
196 " There is always room for more books. "
197 " Know Thyself,' Dorian says. [...]'That's half the Rawlins family motto,' Zachary says.'What's the other half?''And Learn to Suffer. "
198 " The librarians always seem more enthusiastic during J-term, when they can spend more time with books and less with frazzled students and irate faculty. "
199 " Something was, and then something changed. Change is what a story is, after all. "
200 " ..., how when he felt himself falling he would go and find a new book and fall into it instead and be someone somewhere else for a while. "