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Quote by Matt Haig

“Nora stared at the books around her. 'So, are you saying I only have pawns to play with?' 'I am saying that the thing that looks the most ordinary might end up being the thing that leads you to victory. You have to keep going. Like that day in the river. Do you remember?”

Quote by Matt Haig

Book:The Midnight Library
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The Midnight Library

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Matt Haig
Matt Haig

Matt Haig is a British novelist born in 1975. His works are known for their humor and profound emotional insight, enjoying great popularity among readers. Haig's writing spans a variety of genres, including science fiction, fantasy, and realism. more

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“She remembered, as she watched herself, the aches in her shoulders and arms. The stiff heaviness of them, as if she'd been wearing armour. She remembered not understanding why, for all that effort, the silhouette of the sycamore trees stubbornly stayed the same size, just as the bank stayed exactly the same distance away. She remembered swallowing some of the dirty water. And looking around at the other bank, the bank from where she had come and the place where she was kind of now standing, watching, along with that younger version of her brother and his friends, beside her, oblivious to her present self, and to the bookshelves on either side of them. She remembered how, in her delirium, she had thought of the word 'equidistant'. A word that belonged in the clinical safety of a classroom. 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.”

Matt HaigThe Midnight Library
Book:The Midnight Library
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“Life is always an act,' Mrs. Elm said, as they watched her brother being pulled back from the water's edge by his friends. As he then watched a girl whose name she'd long forgotten make an emergency call. 'And you acted when it counted. You swam to that bank. You clawed yourself out. You coughed your guts out and had hypothermia but you crossed the river, against incredible odds. You found something inside you.”

Matt HaigThe Midnight Library
Book:The Midnight Library
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“I was so stupid, doing that swim, just trying to impress people. I always thought Joe was better than me. I wanted him to like me.' 'Why did you think he was better than you? Because your parents did?' Nora felt angry at Mrs. Elm's directness. But maybe she had a point. 'I always had to do what they wanted me to do in order to impress them. Joe had his issues, obviously. And I didn't really understand those issues until I knew he was gay, but they say sibling rivalry isn't about siblings but parents, and I always felt my parents just encouraged his dreams a bit more.”

Matt HaigThe Midnight Library
Book:The Midnight Library
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“Every life she had tried so far since entering the library had really been someone else's dream. The married life in the pub had been Dan's dream. The trip to Australia had been Izzy's dream, and her regret about not going had been a guilt for her best friend more than a sorrow for herself. The dream of her becoming a swimming champion belonged to her father. And okay, so it was true that she had been interested in the Arctic and being a glaciologist when she was younger, but that had been steered quite significantly by her chats with Mrs. Elm herself, back in the school library. And The Labyrinths, well, that had always been her brother's dream.”

Matt HaigThe Midnight Library
Book:The Midnight Library
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“You need to choose more lives from the bottom or top shelves. You have been seeking to undo your most obvious regrets. The books on the higher and lower shelves are the lives a little bit further removed. Lives you are still living in one universe or another but no ones you have been imagining or mourning or thinking about. They are lives you could live but never dreamed of.' 'So they're unhappy lives?' 'Some will be, some won't be. It's just they are not the most obvious lives. They are ones which might require a little imagination to reach. But I am sure you can get there...”

Matt HaigThe Midnight Library
Book:The Midnight Library
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