The Midnight Library

by Matt Haig

‘Go confidently in the direction of your dreams,’ Thoreau had said. ‘Live the life you’ve imagined.’

‘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 different if you had made other choices . . . Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?’

Bertrand Russell wrote that ‘To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three-parts dead’.

A person was like a city. You couldn’t let a few less desirable parts put you off the whole. There may be bits you don’t like, a few dodgy side streets and suburbs, but the good stuff makes it worthwhile.

‘So, you see? Sometimes regrets aren’t based on fact at all. Sometimes regrets are just . . .’ She searched for the appropriate term and found it. ‘A load of bullshit.’

you can choose choices but not outcomes.

‘Librarians have knowledge. They guide you to the right books. The right worlds. They find the best places. Like soul-enhanced search engines.’

When really success isn’t something you measure, and life isn’t a race you can win.

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.

Was. So much dread in such a small word. Like a stone falling through water.

As Thoreau wrote, ‘It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.’

It is quite a revelation to discover that the place you wanted to escape to is the exact same place you escaped from. That the prison wasn’t the place, but the perspective.