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A review by booksandboardingpass
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
5.0
« But shed been feeling lonely. And though she'd studied enough existential philosophy to believe loneliness was a fundamental part of being a human in an essentially meaningless universe, it was good to see him. »
« She wanted to have a purpose, something to give her a reason to exist. But she had nothing. »
« Between life and death there is a library," she said. 'And within that library, the shelves go on for ever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be different if you had made other choices . .. Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?' »
« You have as many lives as you have possibilities. There are lives where you make different choices. And those choices lead to different outcomes. If you had done just one thing differently, you would have a different life story. And they all exist in the Midnight Library. They are all as real as this life' »
« Bertrand Russell wrote that To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three-parts dead. Maybe that was her problem. Maybe she was just scared of living. »
« A person was like a city. You couldnt let a few less desirable parts put you off the whole. There may be bits you don't like, a few dodgy side streets and suburbs, but the good stuff makes it worthwhile. »
« Do you ever think 'how did I end up here? Like you are in a maze and totally lost and it's all your fault because you were the one who made every turn? And you know that there are many routes that could have helped you out, because you hear all the people on the outside of the maze who made it through »
« So, you see? Sometimes regrets aren't based on fact at all.Sometimes regrets are just...’ She searched for the appropriate term and found it. 'A load of bullshit? »
« what we consider to be the most successful route for us to take, actually isn't. Because too often our view of success is about some external bullshit idea of achievement - an Olympic medal, the ideal husband, a good salary. And we have all these metrics that we try and reach. When really success isn't something you measure, and life isn't a race you can win. It's all ... bollocks, actually… »
« The quiet made her realise how much noise there was elsewhere in the world. Here, noise had meaning. You heard something and you had to pay attention. »
« When you stay too long in a place, you forget just how big an expanse the world is. You get no sense of the length of those longitudes and latitudes. Just as, she supposed, it is hard to have a sense of the vastness inside any one person.
But once you sense that vastness, once something reveals it, hope emerges, whether you want it to or not, and it clings to you as stubbornly as lichen clings to rock. »
« It was as though she had reached some state of acceptance about life - that if there was a bad experience, there wouldn't only be bad experiences. She realised that she hadn't tried to end her life because she was miserable, but
because she had managed to convince herself that there was no way out of her misery.
That, she supposed, was the basis of depression as well as the difference between fear and despair. Fear was when you wandered into a cellar and worried that the door would close shut. Despair was when the door closed and locked behind you. »
« We only know what we perceive. Everything we experience is ultimately just our perception of it. “It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see?" »
« Never underestimate the big importance of small things, Mrs Elm had said. You must always remember that. »
« The paradox of volcanoes was that they were symbols of destruction but also life. Once the lava slows and cools, it solidifies and then breaks down over time to become soil - rich, fertile soil.
She wasn't a black hole, she decided. She was a volcano. And like a volcano she couldn't run away from herself. Shed have to stay there and tend to that wasteland.
She could plant a forest inside herself. »
« She wanted to have a purpose, something to give her a reason to exist. But she had nothing. »
« Between life and death there is a library," she said. 'And within that library, the shelves go on for ever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be different if you had made other choices . .. Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?' »
« You have as many lives as you have possibilities. There are lives where you make different choices. And those choices lead to different outcomes. If you had done just one thing differently, you would have a different life story. And they all exist in the Midnight Library. They are all as real as this life' »
« Bertrand Russell wrote that To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three-parts dead. Maybe that was her problem. Maybe she was just scared of living. »
« A person was like a city. You couldnt let a few less desirable parts put you off the whole. There may be bits you don't like, a few dodgy side streets and suburbs, but the good stuff makes it worthwhile. »
« Do you ever think 'how did I end up here? Like you are in a maze and totally lost and it's all your fault because you were the one who made every turn? And you know that there are many routes that could have helped you out, because you hear all the people on the outside of the maze who made it through »
« So, you see? Sometimes regrets aren't based on fact at all.Sometimes regrets are just...’ She searched for the appropriate term and found it. 'A load of bullshit? »
« what we consider to be the most successful route for us to take, actually isn't. Because too often our view of success is about some external bullshit idea of achievement - an Olympic medal, the ideal husband, a good salary. And we have all these metrics that we try and reach. When really success isn't something you measure, and life isn't a race you can win. It's all ... bollocks, actually… »
« The quiet made her realise how much noise there was elsewhere in the world. Here, noise had meaning. You heard something and you had to pay attention. »
« When you stay too long in a place, you forget just how big an expanse the world is. You get no sense of the length of those longitudes and latitudes. Just as, she supposed, it is hard to have a sense of the vastness inside any one person.
But once you sense that vastness, once something reveals it, hope emerges, whether you want it to or not, and it clings to you as stubbornly as lichen clings to rock. »
« It was as though she had reached some state of acceptance about life - that if there was a bad experience, there wouldn't only be bad experiences. She realised that she hadn't tried to end her life because she was miserable, but
because she had managed to convince herself that there was no way out of her misery.
That, she supposed, was the basis of depression as well as the difference between fear and despair. Fear was when you wandered into a cellar and worried that the door would close shut. Despair was when the door closed and locked behind you. »
« We only know what we perceive. Everything we experience is ultimately just our perception of it. “It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see?" »
« Never underestimate the big importance of small things, Mrs Elm had said. You must always remember that. »
« The paradox of volcanoes was that they were symbols of destruction but also life. Once the lava slows and cools, it solidifies and then breaks down over time to become soil - rich, fertile soil.
She wasn't a black hole, she decided. She was a volcano. And like a volcano she couldn't run away from herself. Shed have to stay there and tend to that wasteland.
She could plant a forest inside herself. »