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Kindle Notes & Highlights
‘While the Midnight Library stands, Nora, you will be preserved from death. Now you have to decide how you want to live.’
‘Because, Nora, sometimes the only way to learn is to live.’
‘The only way to learn is to live.’
‘Never underestimate the big importance of small things,’ Mrs Elm said. ‘You must always remember that.’
‘And . . . and the thing is . . . the thing is . . . what we consider to be the most successful route for us to take, actually isn’t. Because too often our view of success is about some external bullshit idea of achievement – an Olympic medal, the ideal husband, a good salary. And we have all these metrics that we try and reach. When really success isn’t something you measure, and life isn’t a race you can win. It’s all . . . bollocks, actually . . .’
Places are places and memories are memories and life is fucking life.’
‘If one advances confidently,’ Thoreau had written in Walden, ‘in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.’
To be part of nature was to be part of the will to live.
The life of a human, according to the Scottish philosopher David Hume, was of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster. But if it was important enough for David Hume to write that thought down, then maybe it was important enough to aim to do something good. To help preserve life, in all its forms.
To be a human was to continually dumb the world down into an understandable story that keeps things simple.
‘But you will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life,’ he said, wisely. ‘You’re quoting Camus.’
‘Even these bad experiences are serving a purpose, don’t you see?’
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. One square after another. And you can get to the other side and unlock all kinds of power.’
In chess, as in life, possibility is the basis of everything. Every hope, every dream, every regret, every moment of living.’
‘Never underestimate the big importance of small things.’
‘Compassion is the basis of morality,’ the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer had written, in one of his softer moments. Maybe it was the basis of life too.
Why want another universe if this one has dogs?
Never trust someone who is willingly rude to low-paid service staff
‘You don’t have to understand life. You just have to live it.’
‘We only know what we perceive. Everything we experience is ultimately just our perception of it. “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”’
Every life contains many millions of decisions. Some big, some small. But every time one decision is taken over another, the outcomes differ. An irreversible variation occurs, which in turn leads to further variations . . .
What sometimes feels like a trap is actually just a trick of the mind.
The sky grows dark The black over blue Yet the stars still dare To shine for you
‘Life begins,’ Sartre once wrote, ‘on the other side of despair.’
‘You don’t have to understand life. You just have to live it.’
