Loneliness is a fundamental part of being a human in an essentially meaningless universe. 

 The universe tended towards chaos and entropy. That was basic thermodynamics. Maybe it was basic existence too. 

 Happy moments can turn into pain, given time. 

 You don't go to death. Death comes to you. 

 Regrets ignore chronology. They float around. The sequence of these lists changes all the time (this is from when Mrs. Elm explains to Nora the Book of Regrets). 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. She had never wanted to play that game. 

 'To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life is already three-parts dead' -Bertrand Russel 

 But after Izzy had gone to Australia, things had faded between them until their friendship became just a vapour trail of sporadic Facebook and Instagram likes and emoji-filled birthday messages. (Omg this was so very well-stated. Matt Haig is a genius. This is sadly accurate, but that's how life is... friends come and go). 

 'It's hard to predict, isn't it?', she asked, looking blankly in front of her as she moved a black bishop across the board to take a white pawn. 'The things that will make us happy'. 

 '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.' 

 Sometimes regrets aren't based on facts at all. Sometimes regrets are just a load of bullshit. 

 Sometimes the only way to learn is to live. 

 You can choose choices but not outcomes. 

 Never underestimate the big importance of small things. 

 Stamina is essential to stay focused in a life filled with distraction. 

 "Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves." - Henry David Thoreau 

 "Human beings were wired to know only a hundred and fifty people, as that was the average size of hunter-gatherer communities" - Roger Dunbar (this is a very interesting read related to this... and guess what, that's around the same number of FB friends I have!) 

 She imagined seeing herself as just another brilliant freak of nature. Just another sentient animal, trying their best. 

 "You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life" - Camus 

 They say sibling rivalry isn't about siblings, but parents. 

 No player should give up if there were pieces still left on the board. 

 Excellence is never an accident. Excellent outcomes are the result of ''the wise choice of many alternatives." 

 There are more possible ways to play a game of chess than the amount of atoms n the observable universe. So it gets very messy. And there is no right way to play; there are many ways. In chess, as in life, possibility is the basis of everything. Every hope, every dream, every regret, every moment of living. 

 "Who was that?" 
"Oh, just someone I knew in another life." (I just had to add this one because it's so witty!!! I would never be able to use that sentence in real life, but this literally true for Nora).  

 He was a good person, and good people were rare. 

 Never trust someone who is willingly rude to low-paid service staff. 

 Fear is when you wander into a cellar and is worried that the door will close shut. Despair is when the door is closed and is locked behind you. 

 In becoming everyone, you are becoming no one. 

 We only know what we perceive. Everything we experience is ultimately just our perception of it. 

 She realized that you could be as honest as possible in life, but people only see the truth if it is close enough to their reality. 

 Now she saw the kinds of things she could do when she put herself to work. (hellooo note to self!) 

 Life begins on the other side of despair - Sartre 

 While we are alive we always contain a future of multifarious possibility. 

 We don't have to play every game to know what winning feels like. 

 It is quite a revelation to discover that the place you wanted to escape to is the exact same place you escaped from. That the prison wasn't the place, but the perspective.