The Night of Many Endings Quotes

“Why do you need to save everybody else to have purpose?”
― Melissa Payne, The Night of Many Endings

“that libraries were one of the last places someone could go where they didn’t have to buy or believe in anything to come in.”
― Melissa Payne, The Night of Many Endings

“sometimes the best way to open someone’s mind was by listening, not arguing.”
― Melissa Payne, The Night of Many Endings

“The seasons die, but then they come back to life again, there is no reason you cannot too.”
― Melissa Payne, The Night of Many Endings

“When Nora was younger, she’d learned to stuff whatever was on her mind so deep inside it disappeared. She’d”
― Melissa Payne, The Night of Many Endings

“Nora smiled, clapped her hands, and said, “Is there a better place to be stranded than a library?”
― Melissa Payne, The Night of Many Endings

“The old woman was like a sour candy. Sour but surprisingly sweet enough to make you want to have another.”
― Melissa Payne, The Night of Many Endings

“He moved his body, tried to find a more comfortable spot, but regret was a nail poking into his skin no matter which way he turned.”
― Melissa Payne, The Night of Many Endings

“But that had all changed, and now the bad days had piled up on top of each other, separating her from her memories of the good days, until she couldn’t see over them to remember what it had been like on the other side.”
― Melissa Payne, The Night of Many Endings

“The seasons die, but then they come back to life again.” When Vlado spoke, the air puffed in warm clouds from his mouth. “There is no reason you cannot too.”
― Melissa Payne, The Night of Many Endings

“Finish your degree, Vlado. I don’t know your parents, but I can tell you that if you don’t follow your dreams, they have a way of haunting you anyway.”
― Melissa Payne, The Night of Many Endings

“There is more to life than me, Marly. She wrapped her arms tight across her body. Charlie saw something in her that nobody else had noticed. And their ten years together had been the happiest she’d ever been. You made life worth living, Charlie.”
― Melissa Payne, The Night of Many Endings

“That guilt kinda destroyed you, or, like, made things really bad for you. She said you tried to forget it, but you just couldn’t.”
― Melissa Payne, The Night of Many Endings

“Nora was always in movement because idleness didn’t suit her. In the quiet lived the worry, the loneliness, the fear that on some level, she’d let her brother down.”
― Melissa Payne, The Night of Many Endings

“Her mother’s decline was gradual, turning her into a recluse who never left the cabin and relied utterly on her daughter until the day she died. But then Charlie came along, and her days filled with hikes and people, dinners with neighbors and strolls around town, and everything she’d come to believe wasn’t for someone like her. The surprising thing was that she liked it, but mostly because it involved being with Charlie. She loved spending any amount of time with him.”
― Melissa Payne, The Night of Many Endings

“Hell, most adults found it hard to make eye contact with people who made them uncomfortable because they were different or offensive in some way, or simply because it made people feel guilty to be reminded of all that they had and all that others did not.”
― Melissa Payne, The Night of Many Endings

“Well, it challenged me to see that we are each the sum of our experiences and that every decision we make, every experience we have, leads us to this single moment in time.”
― Melissa Payne, The Night of Many Endings

“My mother was a difficult woman to begin with, so by the end, well, it was not a fairy tale. When she died I was forty-five, and I thought that was all there was to it.”
― Melissa Payne, The Night of Many Endings

“to a dutiful daughter who didn’t want to see her parents die alone. She didn’t resent them; she’d chosen to come home. Sometimes she just wished she’d nursed her dreams too.”
― Melissa Payne, The Night of Many Endings

“When she shared personal bits about herself, it made her vulnerable to judgment and unwanted opinions. Like somehow hearing about her tragic life gave people the right to tell her what she should and shouldn’t do.”
― Melissa Payne, The Night of Many Endings

“It was a nice distraction to imagine having someone to come home to, someone to cook or watch movies with, someone to share a weekend. All the couple things that were Instagram-worthy: decorating a Christmas tree, selfies on a beach, a kiss on New Year’s. But those dreams were an exotic by-product of a different life, because the reality was that nobody wanted to share hers.”
― Melissa Payne, The Night of Many Endings

“Her honest answer was, yes, this library was a shelter for anyone seeking knowledge, information, or connection. Like Marlene, like Nora. A place she wanted to share with other lost souls, whether they had a zip code or not.”
― Melissa Payne, The Night of Many Endings

“She’d once heard a librarian describe it perfectly on a podcast—that libraries were one of the last places someone could go where they didn’t have to buy or believe in anything to come in.”
― Melissa Payne, The Night of Many Endings

“Nora understood guilt and how it had long arms that circled and squeezed and made it hard to breathe. But she also knew that guilt had a purpose too. And it was a driving force that shaped her life, gave it dimension and meaning.”
― Melissa Payne, The Night of Many Endings

“The library had been like finding cool water in the midst of a desert, a refuge, and the books inside, her escape.”
― Melissa Payne, The Night of Many Endings

“Nora understood guilt and how it had long arms that circled and squeezed and made it hard to breathe.”
― Melissa Payne, The Night of Many Endings

“A perfume she’d worn her entire life, and it was so familiar and jarring that it had torn a jagged hole across Lewis’s chest, and all his sadness spilled out onto the sidewalk.”
― Melissa Payne, The Night of Many Endings

“This wasn’t her battle, it wasn’t her fight, and it wasn’t her place to make sure he stayed sober. And that was okay. It was okay for her to let him survive on his own. And it was okay for her to live her own life while he did.”
― Melissa Payne, The Night of Many Endings

“it’s what books have the power to do, speak to the reader.”
― Melissa Payne, The Night of Many Endings