2: Robarts Library

You head to Robarts next. Someone had left their essay in a printer. Some parts of it sound awfully familiar...

My Essay

It doesn't make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead. I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep. No man will hurl me down to Death, against my fate.

The truth, however ugly in itself, is always curious and beautiful to seekers after it. Don't cry, I'm sorry to have deceived you so much, but that's how life is. Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill! We are all so afraid, we are all so alone, we all so need from the outside the assurance of our own worthiness to exist.

The people of Third Earth still had a sense of humor. People, I have discovered, are layers and layers of secrets. We just saw Finnick Odair in his underwear. He's a convicted murderer, but he's broken out of wizard prison and he's on the run. Powerful wet stuff, ain't it?

I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. He wanted all to lie in an ecstasy of peace; I wanted all to sparkle and dance in a glorious jubilee. The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. It was better to know the worst than to wonder. Don't you know that it is the worst thing in the world, next to wickedness?

I know it is wet and the sun is not sunny, but we can have lots of good fun that is funny. Let the wild rumpus start! For ten minutes he went on in several languages without stopping, and he scarcely ever repeated himself. When the son came home that night, he stood for a long time at the top of the stairs. On Saturday, he ate through one piece of chocolate cake, one ice-cream cone, one pickle, one slice of Swiss cheese, one slice of salami, one lollipop, one piece of cherry pie, one sausage, one cupcake, and one slice of watermelon.

The only thing worse than a boy who hates you: a boy that loves you. Solid flesh can never live up to the bright shadow cast by its absence. She'd much prefer to read a good book. There must be something in books, something we can't imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. Books have to be heavy because the whole world's inside them.