Quotes About Reflection

Als er een uitweg is, een andere uitweg dan de dood, dan loopt de ontsnappingsroute via de woorden. Maar woorden helpen eerder om 'een' geest te verlaten dan dé geest, en ze geven ons de bouwstenen om een nieuwe geest op te bouwen, identiek maar beter, vlak bij de oude maar met een steviger fundament en heel vaak ook een beter uitzicht.

advised I take things "one day at a time," as if there were another way for days to be experienced.

Well, you don't see yourself as a bad cat owner any more. You looked after him as well as he could have been looked after.

This was the life she had been in mourning for. This was the life she had beaten herself up for not living. This was the timeline she thought she had regretted not existing in.

Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived.

But she'll be there in the bathroom and she won't know how she got there.' 'And have you never walked into a room and wondered what you came in for? Have you never forgotten what you just did?

Als we nu eens een manier konden vinden om de tijd stil te zetten (...) Daaraan moeten we werken. Voor het geval er een gelukkig moment voorbijzweeft. Om dat moment voor eeuwig te hebben, hoeven we alleen maar met ons netje te zwaaien en het als een vlinder te vangen.

Why didn't you?' 'Because, Nora, sometimes the only way to learn is to live.

She remembered something Mrs Elm had told her in the Midnight Library. 'You see, doing one thing differently is very often the same as doing everything differently. Actions can't be reversed within a lifetime, however much we try .

She liked this life – or more precisely, she liked the version of herself in this life.

The regrets she had been living with most of her life were wasted ones.

She imagined, now, what it would be like to accept herself completely. Every mistake she had ever made. Every mark on her body. Every dream she hadn't reached or pain she

And though she'd studied enough existential philosophy to believe loneliness was a fundamental part of being a human in an essentially meaningless universe, it was good to see him.

She imagined, now, what it would be like to accept herself completely. Every mistake she had ever made. Every mark on her body. Every dream she hadn't reached or pain she had felt. Every lust or longing she had suppressed. She imaged accepting it all. The way she accepted nature. The way she accepted a glacier or a puffin or the breach of a whale.

In the face of death, life seemed more attractive, and as life seemed more attractive

Nora was only able to think of herself in terms of the things she wasn't. The things she hadn't been able to become. And there really were quite a lot of things she hadn't become. The regrets which were on permanent repeat in her mind.

It was pathetic really, the amount of possibilities she had squandered.

So, do you want to live a life you could be living? Do you want to do something differently? Is there anything you wish to change? Did you do anything wrong?' That was an easy one. 'Yes. Absolutely everything.

It was, she decided, a very good time to die.

A human life is on average eighty Earth years or around thirty thousand Earth days. 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.

Now, consider this. A human life is on average 80 Earth years or around 30,000 Earth days. 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, realise they would have done it the same, and then they die.

There is a world in which he lives and there is a world in which he is dead. And the move between the two happens with no greater ricochet than the whisper of waves crashing onto distant rocks.

The Book of Regrets 'Every regret you have ever had, since the day you were born, is recorded in here

She stared at her own window. She thought of herself in her root life, hovering between life and death in her bedroom – equidistant, as it were. And, for the first time, Nora worried about herself as if she was actually someone else. Not just another version of her, but a different actual person. As though finally, through all the experiences of life she now had, she had become someone who pitied her former self. Not in self-pity, because she was a different self now.