Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Matt Haig

Quote by Matt Haig

“As soon as Nora entered Oak Leaf Residential Care Home, and before she'd even reached the reception, she saw a frail elderly man wearing glasses whom she recognised. He was having a slightly heated conversation with a nurse who looked exasperated. Like a sigh turned into a human.”

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 stared at her own window. She thought of herself in her root life, hovering between life and death in her bedroom — equidistant, as it were. And, for the first time, Nora worried about herself as if she was actually someone else. Not just another version of her, but a different actual person. As though finally, through all the experiences of life she now had, she had become someone who pitied her former self. Not in self-pity, because she was a different self now.”

“I had a long talk with my dear Fat Mary that night, because I had many questions. Could someone actually be beaten to death by such a nun? Did Mother Rufina, the new Superior, know that Sister Clotilda was so cruel? Who let her work with children? Could nuns go to hell? Fat Mary told me she didn’t know the answers to my questions, but she reminded me that it was her role to take my worries and burdens and keep them for me until a time when I could understand them.”

“Nora felt herself weaken. Not just tingles and fuzziness but something stronger, a sense of plunging into nothingness, accompanied by a brief darkening of her vision. A feeling of another Nora right there in the wings, ready to pick up where this one left off. Her brain ready to fill in the gaps and have a perfectly legitimate reason to be on a day trip to Bedford, and to fill in every absence as if she was here the whole time.”

“Driving back to Cambridge cocooned in her expensive Audi, smelling almost nauseatingly of vinyl and plastic and other synthetic materials, weaving through busy traffic, the cars sliding by like forgotten lives, she was deeply wishing she had been able to see Mrs. Elm, the real one, before she had died. It would have been good to have one last game of chess with her before she passed away. And she thought of poor Leo, sat in a small windowless cell at a Bedford police station, waiting for Doreen to come and collect him. 'This is the best life,' she told herself, a little desperate now. 'This is the best life. I am staying here. This is the life for me. This is the best life. This is the best life.' But she knew she didn't have long.”