All quotes are from THE NIGHT OF MANY ENDINGS by Melissa Payne.
1. Library was a shelter for anyone seeking knowledge, information, or connection.
2. The library had been like finding cool water in the midst of a desert, a refuge, and the books inside, her escape.
3. Sometimes the best way to open someone’s mind was by listening, not arguing.
4. It’s best to keep your expectation low, or you’ll just be disappointed.
5. Some things just had to be done, and some people had to make the tough decisions.
6. Everyone deserves a second chance or a third—even a fourth chance, if that’s what it takes to turn there life around.
7. Everyone had their own story.
8. Good deeds would ripple across the universe.
9. Addiction was a monster that destroyed everything in its path.
10. Some people are just going to do the wrong thing no matter how hard you try to change them.
11. The library was the perfect escape; it’s quiet, her sanctuary; the books, her refuge.
12. It was tough to be let down so often by the world.
13. Everyone has a purpose.
14. It’s what books have the power to do, speak to the reader.
15. He was the moon and his gravitational pull shaped her world so when he stumbled, she did too.
16. 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.
17. Sometimes more didn’t make anything better.
18. If all of our moments are important, then I wanted to use mine to help others, because you never know how it will all add up.
19. I think that my purpose is to give to others, to help in whatever way I can. And if it adds to their moments and experiences, if it shows someone who doesn’t think they’re worth it that someone thinks they are then maybe it makes one of their moments just a little bit better.
20. The truth was that life was unfair and unkind and full of broken promises.
21. Kids today didn’t respect the work of the people who came before them. They didn’t know what hard work and hard labor meant. They were soft, weak, and didn’t care about what was right and wrong.
22. You have to know pain to understand it.
23. Myths gave meaning to the world for people back then.
24. Guilt is a terrible burden to bear.
25. He had made the world brighter, full of possibility.
26. Everyone is miserable. Everyone loses something.
27. You should give people the benefit of the doubt. You never know what kind of day they’ve had.
28. A door, a window, or maybe only a crack had opened up inside and let some of the bitterness and grief leak out.
29. Everyone had opinions and advice and suggestions on how she should live her life, when, in the end, it was nobody’s business but her own.
30. Not everyone fell down the rabbit hole when things got hard.
31. Sometimes the heaviness of the world, the shattered lives of the people around her, the reality of her own life, became too much.
32. One thing I can’t bear is someone who doesn’t speak their mind.
33. Sometimes losing someone was too much to bear.
34. Fear could make you do things you didn’t mean.
35. It’s okay to be selfish once in a while.
36. Life was hard and losing loved ones was an avalanche of sad.
37. Sometimes dignity was more important than comfort.
38. They’d all shared something, been through something together, and for a moment she thought the experience had changed her. But without the insulating dark, the light felt garish and dismal, shattering the illusion that their conversations had been anything more than a way to pass the time.
39. Life was as good as it would ever get. And she was okay with that. She didn’t understand this generation of young people who thought life was supposed to be easy. The ones who complained about Wi-Fi and social media and had the attentions span of a gnat.
40. Life was too damn short to wait a minute longer.
DEEKAY | Daily Dose of Reading 