Quotes About Choices

It is easy to mourn the lives we aren't living. Easy to wish we'd developed other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we'd worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga.

It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out. But it is not the lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It's the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people's worst enemy.

You have as many lives as you have possibilities. There are lives where you make different choices. And those choices lead to different outcomes. If you had done just one thing differently, you would have a different life story. And they all exist in the Midnight Library. They are all as real as this life.' 'Parallel lives?' 'Not always parallel. Some are more . . . perpendicular.

It can drive you insane, thinking of all the other lives we don't live.

Life is strange,' she said. 'How we live it all at once. In a straight line. But really that's not the whole picture. Because life isn't simply made of the things we do, but the things we don't do too. And every moment of our life is a . . . kind of turning.

There are billions of different versions of an older you. There is one version of the present you.

Which means they are born, they make some friends, eat a few meals, they get married or they don't get married, have a child or two, or not, drink a few thousand glasses of wine, have sexual intercourse a few times, discover a lump somewhere, feel a bit of regret, wonder where all the time went, know they should have done it differently, realize they would have done it the same, and then they die.

It is time, my dear, to begin.' 'If you don't mind me asking – begin what?' '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.

Maybe there are no easy paths. There are just paths

It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn't make and the work we didn't do and the people we didn't marry and the children we didn't have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the kens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, as infinitum, until our time runs out.

Still staring blankly at The Book of Regrets, she wondered if her parents had ever been in love or if they had got married because marriage was something you did at the appropriate time with the nearest available person. A game where you grabbed the first person you could find when the music stopped.

You didn't have to enjoy every aspect of each life to keep having the option of experiencing them. You just had to never give up on the idea that there would be a life somewhere that could be enjoyed.

There are billions of different versions of an older you. There is one version of the present you. Focus on that.

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?

But it is not the lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is regret itself. It's the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other peoples worst enemy. We. can't tell if any of those other versions would have been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on.

But it is not the lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is regret itself. It's the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people's worst enemy. We can't tell if any of those other versions would have been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on.

Being aware that everything that could possibly happen happened to her somewhere, in some life, kind of absolved her a little from decisions.

Life is strange,' she said. 'How we live it all at once. In a straight line. But really that's not the whole picture. Because life isn't simply made of the things we do, but the things we don't do too. And every moment of our life is a . . . kind of turning.

That means there are still as many possible lives out there for you as there ever were. An infinite number, in fact. You can never run out of possibilities.' 'But

I think it is easy to imagine there are easier paths,' she said, realising something for the first time. 'But maybe there are no easy paths. There are just paths. In one life, I might be married. In another, I might be working in a shop. I might have said yes to this cute guy who asked me out for a coffee. In another I might be researching

It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn't make and the work we didn't do and the people we didn't marry and the children we didn't have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out.

Entre a vida e a morte, há uma biblioteca — disse ela. — E, dentro dessa biblioteca, as prateleiras não têm fim. Cada livro oferece uma oportunidade de experimentar outra vida que você poderia ter vivido. De ver como as coisas seriam se tivesse feito outras escolhas... Você teria feito algo diferente, se houvesse a chance de desfazer tudo de que se arrepende?

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?

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. The books are portals to all the lives you could be living.