The Midnight Library

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

‘Because, Nora, sometimes the only way to learn is to live.’

Doing one thing differently is often the same as doing everything differently.

Happy moments can turn into pain, given time.

The paradox of volcanoes was that they were symbols of destruction but also life. Once the lava slows and cools, it solidifies and then breaks down over time to become soil – rich, fertile soil.

‘Not a massive demand for philosophers in Bedford, if I’m honest,

‘Well, far be it from me to say, but there is more to this world than swimming really fast. There are many different possible lives ahead of you.

It reminded her that everyone was better off without her. You get near a black hole and the gravitational pull drags you into its bleak, dark reality.

‘Oh, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’
She was a waterfall of apologies. She was drowning in herself.

‘Pressure makes us, though. You start off as coal and the pressure makes you a diamond.’
She didn’t correct his knowledge of diamonds. She didn’t tell him that while coal and diamonds are both carbon, coal is too impure to be able, under whatever pressure, to become a diamond. According to science, you start off as coal and you end up as coal. Maybe that was the real-life lesson.