Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Matt Haig

Quote by Matt Haig

Work

The Midnight Library

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

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

You May Also Like

“She had thought, in her nocturnal and suicidal hours, that solitude was the problem. But that was because it hadn't been true solitude. The lonely mind in the busy city yearns for connection because it thinks human-to-human connection is the point of everything. But amid pure nature (or the 'tonic of wildness' as Thoreau called it) solitude took on a different character. It became in itself a kind of connection. A connection between herself and the world. And between her and herself.”

Matt HaigThe Midnight Library
Book:The Midnight Library
Create image

“She remembered a conversation she'd had with Ash. Tall and slightly awkward and cute and forever in need of a new songbook for his guitar. The chat hadn't been in the shop but in the hospital, when her mother was ill. Shortly after discovering she had ovarian cancer, she had needed surgery. Nora had taken her mum to see all the consultants at Bedford General Hospital, and she had held her mum's hand more in those few weeks than in all the rest of their relationship put together.”

Matt HaigThe Midnight Library
Book:The Midnight Library
Create image

“And that had led to them talking about social media — he believed that the more people were connected on social media, the lonelier society became. 'That's why everyone hates each other nowadays,' he reckoned. 'Because they are overloaded with non-friend 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. 'And the Domesday Book.' Ash had told her, under the stark lighting of the hospital canteen, 'if you look at the Domesday Book, the average size of an English community at that time was a hundred and fifty people. Except in Kent. Where it was a hundred people. I'm from Kent. We have anti-social DNA.' 'I've been to Kent,' Nora had countered. 'I noticed that. But I like that theory. I can meet that many people on Instagram in an hour.' 'Exactly. Not healthy! Our brains can't handle it. Which is why we crave face-to-face communication more than ever. And...which is why I would never buy my Simon & Garfunkel guitar chord songbooks online!”

Matt HaigThe Midnight Library
Book:The Midnight Library
Create image