Ninth House Book Quotes

he could never shake the thought that he was seeing only one world when there might be many, that there were lost places, maybe even lost people who might come to life for him if he just squinted hard enough or found the right magic words. Books, with their promises of enchanted doorways and secret places, only made it worse.

Suffocating beneath a pile of books seems an appropriate way to go for a research assistant.

Danny spent most of his time at the museum or in his room with the door locked, lost in books he consumed like a flame eating air, trying to stay alight.

You shouldn’t be ashamed to be different,” her mother had said when Alex had summoned the courage to ask for the name change. “I called you Galaxy for a reason.” Alex didn’t disagree. Most of the books she read and the TV shows she watched told her different was okay. Different was great! Except no one was different quite like her.

She had found a nasty, forbidden little book in the great Ninth repositories of nasty, forbidden little books, and all the Houses would have had a collective aneurysm if they knew she’d even read it.

The library was also a little temperamental. If you weren’t specific enough in your request or if it couldn’t find books on your desired subject, the shelf would just keep shaking and eventually start to give off heat and emit a high, frantic whine, until you snatched the Albemarle Book and murmured a soothing incantation over its pages while gently caressing its spine.

Put it on record --I am an Arab And the number of my card is fifty thousand I have eight children And the ninth is due after summer. What's there to be angry about? Put it on record. --I am an Arab Working with comrades of toil in a quarry. I have eight childern For them I wrest the loaf of bread, The clothes and exercise books From the rocks And beg for no alms at your doors, --Lower not myself at your doorstep. --What's there to be angry about? Put it on record. --I am an Arab. I am a name without a tide, Patient in a country where everything Lives in a whirlpool of anger. --My roots --Took hold before the birth of time --Before the burgeoning of the ages, --Before cypess and olive trees, --Before the proliferation of weeds. My father is from the family of the plough --Not from highborn nobles. And my grandfather was a peasant --Without line or genealogy. My house is a watchman's hut --Made of sticks and reeds. Does my status satisfy you? --I am a name without a surname. Put it on Record. --I am an Arab. Color of hair: jet black. Color of eyes: brown. My distinguishing features: --On my head the 'iqal cords over a keffiyeh --Scratching him who touches it. My address: --I'm from a village, remote, forgotten, --Its streets without name --And all its men in the fields and quarry. --What's there to be angry about? Put it on record. --I am an Arab. You stole my forefathers' vineyards --And land I used to till, --I and all my childern, --And you left us and all my grandchildren --Nothing but these rocks. --Will your government be taking them too --As is being said? So! --Put it on record at the top of page one: --I don't hate people, --I trespass on no one's property. And yet, if I were to become starved --I shall eat the flesh of my usurper. --Beware, beware of my starvation. --And of my anger!

It was strange to Alex that the smell of books was always the same. The ancient documents in the climate-controlled stacks and glass cases of Beinecke. The research rooms at Sterling. The changeable library of Lethe House. They all had the same scent as the fluorescent-lit reading rooms full of cheap paperbacks she’d lived in as a kid.

Pusillanimity: . Such small doors in such tall houses! Do Men live here or Pygmies?

He would forget about it for weeks, sometimes months at a time, but he could never shake the thought that he was seeing only one world when there might be many, that there were lost places, maybe even lost people who might come to life for him if he just squinted hard enough or found the right magic words. Books, with their promises of enchanted doorways and secret places, only made it worse.

What happens if you guys miss a year?” Alex had asked when Darlington first showed her how the library worked. “It happened in 1928.” “And?” “All of the books from the collection crowded into the library at once and the floor collapsed on Chester Vance, Oculus.” “Jesus, that’s horrible.” “I don’t know,” Darlington had said meditatively. “Suffocating beneath a pile of books seems an appropriate way to go for a research assistant.

At school, my religious-education teacher expressly forbade us to write "Xmas." It was regarded as a foul blasphemy. How would I like it if people used an anonymous X in place of my name? However, it would seem that the word "Xmas" is not blasphemous after all. In the original Greek, "Christ" was written "Xristos," but the X isn't the Roman "ecks"; The Cassell Dictionary of Word Histories explains that it is the Greek letter "chi" (pronounced with a k to rhyme with "eye"--k'eye). The x is simply a stand-in for "the first letter of Greek Khristos--Christ." Indeed, the Chi-Rho (CH-r--the first two syllables of "Christ") illumination can be seen in the ancient Irish manuscript of the Gospels, The Book of Kells, which is housed at Trinity College in Dublin. This work dates back to the ninth century. Of course, strictly speaking, Xmas" should still be pronounced "Christmas" because it's an abbreviation, not an alternative word.

Gentleman demon. A creature even the dead had feared.

Esa era la realidad de la magia: sangre, tripas, semen y saliva, tarros de órganos, mapas para cazar personas y calaveras de bebés nonatos.

¿Nunca te has preguntado por qué funcionan las palabras fúnebres. Porque a fin de cuentas no somos nada y no hay cosa más aterradora que la nada.

— Joder, Alex, ¿por qué sonríes? — Han intentado matarme, Hellie — dijo con un hilo de voz mientras se sumía en la oscuridad. "Y pienso devolverles el favor".

Las cosas que amas, las cosas que necesitas, te lo arrebatan todo.

¿Por qué prometer magia a los niños? ¿Por qué plantar un anhelo que jamás se podría satisfacer (un deseo de revelación, de transformación) para luego dejarlos a la deriva en un mundo pragmático y desolador?

The radio played, barely audible, as the newsreader continued unperturbed. ‘…Cross border delays are expected to increase even more from this Saturday the ninth of June, as major road works commence on the La Linea approach roads…’ As she raised a glass of orange juice to her lips, a blood-curdling scream rang out from deep within the house. A blue rock thrush, momentarily perched on the terrace walls, took flight as the glass of orange fell from the the

So how did you think about him?” Rachel asks. Hallelujah shrugs. “We were friends. Good friends. He knew—knows—a lot about me. I guess I know a lot about him. Stuff he likes and doesn’t like.” Rachel looks skeptical. “And yet you never knew he liked you.” “No! I mean—when Jonah and I were friends, I liked Luke. So maybe I missed some signs.” “So you just . . . hung out? Platonically?” “Yeah. I guess.” Hallelujah thinks about how to explain it. How to distill a friendship down to its most basic components. “We had choir together last year. We talked. For kind of the first time, even though we’d been in church and school together since fourth grade.” “And, what, you found out you had so much in common?” “Actually, no. But we started comparing music we liked, and a month into ninth grade, Jonah made me this mix of songs. Based on what we’d talked about. So then I made him a mix. And it grew from there. We’d go to each other’s houses, watch movies, listen to music, that kind of thing. Hanging out.” “So tell me about Jonah. Something only you know.” “Um. He’d probably deny it, but he got really into the Harry Potter books. Like, really into them. I loaned him my box set last spring. He got so mad at me for not warning him how Book Six ends.” Rachel laughs. “He didn’t see the movies?” “No. But I told him we couldn’t watch them until he’d finished the books.