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The Midnight Library Quotes

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The Midnight Library Quotes

“The thing she had once loved about swimming was the disappearing. In the water, her focus had been so pure that she thought of nothing else. Any school or home worries vanished. The art of swimming — she supposed like any art — was about purity. The more focused you were on the activity, the less focused you were on everything else. You kind of stopped being you and became the thing you were doing.”

Matt HaigThe Midnight Library
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“Cats.' 'What about them?' 'They've got a parasite. Toxoplas-something.' Nora knew this. She had known this since she was a teen, doing her work experience at Bedford Animal Rescue Centre. 'Toxoplasmosis.' 'That's it! Well, I was listening to this podcast, right...and there's this theory that this international group of billionaires infected the cats with it so that they could take over the world by making humans dumber and dumber. I mean, think about it. There are cats everywhere.”

Matt HaigThe Midnight Library
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“Librarians have knowledge. They guide you to the right books. The right worlds. They find the best places. Like soul-enhanced search engines.' 'Exactly. But you also have to know what you like. What to type into the metaphorical search box. And sometimes you have to try a few things before that becomes clear.' 'I haven't got the stamina. I don't think I can do this.' 'The only way to learn is to live.”

Matt HaigThe Midnight Library
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“As soon as I started winning swimming races, I became seen and I didn't want to be seen. And not only seen but seen in a swimsuit at the exact age you are self-obsessing about your body. Someone said I had boy's shoulders. It was a stupid thing but there were lots of stupid things and you feel them all at that age. As a teenager I'd have happily been invisible. People called me "The Fish". They didn't mean it as a compliment. I was shy. It was one of the reasons why I preferred the library to the playing field. It seems a small thing, but it really helped, having that space.”

Matt HaigThe Midnight Library
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“She had been cross with him saying that. As if there was a very thin path to a happy life and it was the path he had decided for her. As if her own agency in her own life was automatically wrong. But what she didn't fully appreciate at fifteen years of age was just how bad regret could feel, and how much her father had felt that pain of being so near to the realisation of a dream he could almost touch it.”

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“It was hard to remember, exactly, what he had sounded like before. What he had been like, precisely. But that was the nature of memory. At university she had done an essay drily titled 'The Principles of Hobbesian Memory and Imagination.' Thomas Hobbes had viewed memory and imagination as pretty much the same thing, and since discovering that she had never entirely trusted her memories.”

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“Do you ever feel lucky to have me? Do you realise how close I was to leaving you, two days before the wedding? Do you know how messed up you would have been if I hadn't turned up at the wedding?' 'Wow. Really? You have yourself in quite high esteem there, Nora.' 'Shouldn't I? I mean, shouldn't everyone? What's wrong with self-esteem? And besides, it's true. There's another universe where you send me WhatsApp messages about how messed up you are without me. How you turn to alcohol, although it seems like you turn to alcohol with me too. You send me texts saying you miss my voice.”

Matt HaigThe Midnight Library
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“So,' wondered Mrs. Elm, look at Nora. 'What are you feeling?' 'Like I still want to die. I have wanted to die for quite a while. I have carefully calculated that the pain of me living as the bloody disaster that is myself is greater than the pain anyone else will feel if I were to die. In fact, I'm sure it would be a relief. I'm not useful to anyone. I was bad at work. I have disappointed everyone. I am a waste of a carbon footprint, to be honest. I hurt people. I have no one left. Not even poor old Volts, who died because I couldn't look after a cat properly. I want to die. My life is a disaster. And I want it to end. I am not cut out for living. And there is no point going through all this. Because I am clearly destined to be unhappy in other lives too. That is just me. I add nothing. I am wallowing in self-pity. I want to die.”

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“Mrs. Elm studied Nora hard, as if reading a passage in a book she had read before but had just found it contained a new meaning. 'Want,' she told her, in a measured tone, 'is an interesting word. It means lack. Sometimes if we fill that lack with something else the original want disappears entirely. Maybe you have a lack problem rather than a want problem. Maybe there is a life that you really want to live.”

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“Do you need another look at The Book of Regrets?' Nora scrunched her nose and gave a minute shake of her head. She remembered the feeling of being suffocated by so much regret. 'No.' 'What about your cat? What was his name again?' 'Voltaire. It was a bit pretentious, and he wasn't really a pretentious cat, so I just called him Volts for short. Sometimes Voltsy, if I was feeling jovial. Which was rare, obviously. I couldn't even finalise a name for a cat.”

Matt HaigThe Midnight Library
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