Barb’s Reviews > The Midnight Train > Status Update

Ultimately, even love was weak against the desire to avoid pain.

He had used work to accelerate his existence, to soften life's jagged edges into a blur. And he was good at it. It gave his meaning and he had loved it but work -- to the excesses he had done it -- was also a way to life without living. A way to transfer emotions over to something less personal, something g with lower stakes.

The (book) characters are like people but better because you do t have to talk to them.

He read because stories gave him room to grow beyond the world he was given.