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. (Location 714)
And so when he had asked her to marry him, in the cocktail bar on the top floor of the Oxo Tower, she had agreed and maybe she had always been right to agree. (Location 721)
‘Want,’ she told her, in a measured tone, ‘is an interesting word. It means lack. Sometimes if we fill that lack with something else the original want disappears entirely. Maybe you have a lack problem rather than a want problem. Maybe there is a life that you really want to live.’ (Location 925)
‘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.’ (Location 989)
Tags: regrets
Note: .regrets regrets are often not based on facts
‘Never underestimate the big importance of small things,’ Mrs Elm said. ‘You must always remember that.’ (Location 1259)
The lonely mind in the busy city yearns for connection because it thinks human-to-human connection is the point of everything. But amid pure nature (or the ‘tonic of wildness’ as Thoreau called it) solitude took on a different character. It became in itself a kind of connection. A connection between herself and the world. And between her and herself. (Location 1833)
Tags: connection
Note: .connection
Every second of every day we are entering a new universe. And we spend so much time wishing our lives were different, comparing ourselves to other people and to other versions of ourselves, when really most lives contain degrees of good and degrees of bad.’ (Location 2523)
Tags: comparison
It seemed the more lives she lived, the harder it was to feel at home anywhere. (Location 2998)
‘Life begins,’ Sartre once wrote, ‘on the other side of despair.’ (Location 3779)