‘Between life and death there is a library,’ she said. ‘And within that library, the shelves go on for ever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be if you had made other choices . . . Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?’
'Pressure makes us though,'
'I don't think your problem was stage fright. Or wedding fright. I think your problem was life fright.' This hurt. The words took the air out of her. 'And I think your problem,' she retaliated, voice trembling, 'is blaming others for your shitty life.'
'Go confidently in the direction of your dreams,' Thoreau had said. 'Live the life you've imagined.'
'Every move had been a mistake, every decision is a disaster, every day a retreat from who she'd imagined she'd be.'
'The thought [of everyone being better off without her] was like a ceaseless mind-cramp, something too uncomfortable to bear yet too strong to avoid.'
'I had all the chances to make something of my life, and I blew every one of them."
'The reality was simply too big to absorb at first, but then it had hit her hard and sideways, taking her off the track she'd known.'
'Things will get better. It's going to be alright.'
'You don't go to death. Death comes to you.'
'Decide how you want to live.'
'Every life contains many millions of decisions. Some big, some small. But every time one decision is taken over another, the outcomes differ.'
'You have as many lives as you have possibilities. There are lives where you make different choices. And those choices lead to different outcomes.'
'Doing one thing differently is often the same as doing everything differently.'
'Some regrets were a little fainter than others.'
'To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three-parts dead.'
'If you have found a life you truly want to live, then you get to live it until you die of old age.'
'True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.' - Socrates
'Everyone's lives could have ended up an infinite number of ways.'
'And now I don't really care because I don't think me knowing things that you don't should bother you.'
'It's hard to predict, isn't it?' she asked, looking blankly in front of her as she moved a black bishop across the board to take a white pawn. 'The things that will make us happy.'
'Dan wasn't like that,' 'Or maybe he was like that and I just didn't see it.'
'Want is an interesting word. It means lack. Sometimes if we fill that lack with something else the original want disappears entirely.'
'The only way to learn is to live.'
'Sometimes regrets aren't based on fact at all. Sometimes regrets are just load of bullshit.'
'It turned out to be near impossible to stand in a library and not want to pull things from the shelves.'
'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.'
'You can choose choices but not outcomes.'
'Regrets don't leave. They weren't mosquito bites. They itch forever.'
'Never underestimate the big importance of small things.'
'The rook is my favorite piece,' she said. 'It's the one that you think you don't have to watch out for. It is straightforward. You keep your eye on the queen, and the knights, and the bishop, because they are the sneaky ones. But it's the took that often gets you. The straightforward is never quite what it seems.'
'If you aim to be something you are not, you will always fail.'
'I have anxiety. I have no other type of thinking available.'
'Success isn't something you measure, and life isn't a race you can win.'
'Life is frightening, and it is frightening for a reason, and the reason is that it doesn't matter which branch of a life we get to live, we are always the same rotten tree. I wanted to be many things in my life. All kinds of things. But if your life is rotten, it will be rotten no matter what you do.'
'Is happiness the aim?'
'Places are places and memories are memories and life is fucking life.'
'Life is full of strange phenomena.'
'The more people were connected on social media, the lonelier society became.'
'The frustration of not finding a library when you really need one.'
'And that was the problem. In the face of death, life seemed more attractive.'
'Life was meant to fuck you over.'
'Maybe that's what all lives were, though. Maybe even the most seemingly perfectly intense or worthwhile lives ultimately felt the same.'
'Maybe it wasn't the lack of achievements that had made her and her brother's parents unhappy, maybe it was the expectation to achieve in the first place.'
'Science tells us that the "grey zone" between life and death is a mysterious place.'
'Minds can't see what they can't handle.'
'But you will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.'
'You really need to start trying. To see the truth. Because this matters.'
'You seem to realize that life could be worth living, if only you found the right one to exist inside.'
'All good things are wild and free.'
'There is no rejection, there is only redirection.'
'You can have everything and feel nothing.'
'I think it is easy to imagine there are easier paths,' she said, realizing something for the first time. 'But maybe there are no easy paths. There are just paths.'
'It would have made things a lot easier if we understood there was no way of living that can immunize you against sadness.'
'There is no life where you can be in a state of sheer happiness for ever.'
'Even these bad experiences are serving a purpose. don't you see?'
'Remember that a pawn is the most magical piece of all. It might look small and ordinary but it isn't. Because a pawn is never just a pawn. A pawn is a queen-in-waiting. All you need to do is find a way to keep moving forward. Once square after another. And you can get to the other side and unlock all kinds of power.'
'Excellent outcomes were the result of the wise choice of many alternatives.'
'Never trust someone who is willingly rude to low-paid service staff.'
'You didn't have to enjoy every aspect of each life to keep having the option of experiencing the,. You just had to never give up on the idea that there would be a life somewhere that could be enjoyed.'
'If there was a bad experience, there wouldn't only be bad experiences.'
'It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.'
'What sometimes feels like a trap is actually just a trick of the mind.'
'The impossible, I suppose, happens via living.'
'It is quite a revelation to discover that the place you wanted to escape to is the exact place you escaped from. That the prison wasn't the place, but the perspective.'
And if only I could share my copy to you, you'll read more rants about the protagonist because, to be honest, I am not a big fan. But I am a fan of the book! It was well-written easy to comprehend, relatable (at times) in a way that it makes you realize how other people struggle with anxiety and depression and how they want to get through it subconsciously, they just need a push.
