The thing’s breath was unbelievable, like a dead animal soaked in sewage and garlic wine. Was that what the digestion of words smelled like?

Scott Lynch, In the Stacks [Amazon]

Hermetic quote Lynch In the Stacks breath unbelievable dead animal sewage garlic wine digestion of words smelled like

Consider also:

  1. “For the Game is of course purely a symbol of the human imagination and emphatically not a patentable “Monopoly” of the mind.”
  2. “Etched on his cuirass was a stylized scroll, symbol of the Living Library, surmounted by the phrase Auvidestes, Gerani, Molokare. The words were Alaurin, the ancient language of formal scholarship, and they formed the motto of the Librarians: RETRIEVE. RETURN. SURVIVE.”
  3. “He constructed a brass trunk and etched binding symbols on its lid”
  4. “From the time I was bedridden I had awakened into a strange and unbelievable world in which I had no need for the world of the rabble—a world that was within me, a world full of unknowns, and it was as if I was forced to examine and inspect all its cracks and crevices.”
  5. “In groping for so-called absolute truths, the mind is trying to encompass or embrace the whole. If there is only becoming, then truth must always be relative.”