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The Midnight Library

Book by Matt Haig · 46 quotes · Matt Haig, The Midnight Library, Life

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The Midnight Library Quotes

“Thoreau had been her favourite philosopher to study. But who seriously goes confidently in the direction of their dreams? Well, apart from Thoreau. He'd gone and lived in the woods, with no contact from the outside world, to just sit there and write and chop wood and fish. But life was probably simpler two centuries ago in Concord, Massachusetts, than modern life in Bedford, Bedfordshire. Or maybe it wasn't Maybe she was just really crap at it. At life.”

“Equidistant. Such a neutral, mathematical kind of word, and one that became a stuck thought, repeating itself like a manic meditation as she used the last of her strength to stay almost exactly where she was. Equidistant. Equidistant. Equidistant. Not aligned to one bank or the other. That was how she had felt most of her life. Caught in the middle. Struggling, flailing, just trying to survive while not knowing which way to go. Which path to commit to without regret.”

“Dacă urmărești să devii ceva ce nu ești, vei da greș întotdeauna. Fii tu însuți. Arată, comportă-te natural și gândește cu mintea ta. Fii cea mai sinceră variantă a ta. Acceptă-ți eul. Susține-l. Iubește-l. Străduiește-te pentru el. Nu te abate atunci când oamenii îl iau în râs sau îl batjocoresc. Cele mai multe bârfe ascund invidii. Ține capul aplecat. Păstrează-ți energia.”

“No cuesta ningún esfuerzo echar de menos a los amigos que no hicimos en el trabajo, a las parejas con que no nos casamos o a los hijos que no tuvimos. No es difícil verse a través del cristal por el que miran otras personas y desear ser todas las caleidoscópicas versiones que estas buscan en nosotros. Es fácil arrepentirse y lamentarse, y hacerlo una y otra vez, hasta el infinito, hasta que se nos termine el tiempo.”

“People with stamina aren’t made any differently to anyone else,’ she was saying. ‘The only difference is they have a clear goal in mind, and a determination to get there. Stamina is essential to stay focused in a life filled with distractions. It is the ability to stick to a task when your body and mind are at their limit, the ability to keep your head down, swimming in your lane, without looking around, worrying who might overtake you...”

“It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn’t make and the work we didn’t do and the people we didn’t marry and the children we didn’t have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the kens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, as infinitum, until our time runs out.”

“That’s why everyone hates each other nowadays,’ he reckoned. ‘Because they are overloaded with non-friends friends. Ever heard about Dunbar’s number?’ And then he had told her about a man called Roger Dunbar at Oxford University, who had discovered that human beings were wired to know only a hundred and fifty people, as that was the average size of hunter-gatherer communities.”