Quotes from Matt Haig

as Nietzsche put it: "The end of a melody is not its goal: but nonetheless, had the melody not reached its end it would not have reached its goal either.

Seriously, if there was a needier species in the universe, I have yet to meet it.

She didn't even need a large house and the perfect family. She just needed potential. And she was nothing if not potential.

If you aim to be something you are not, you will always fail. Aim to be you. Aim to look and act and think like you. Aim to be the truest version of you. Embrace that you-ness. Endorse it. Love it. Work hard at it.

Our mind might make prisons, but it also gives us keys.

Her mind felt different here. She thought a lot in this life, but her thoughts were gentle.

Sometimes regrets aren't based on fact at all. Sometimes regrets are just .

Remove this quote from your collection "But you can be anything you want to be, Nora. Think of all that possibility. It's exiting" "Yes I suppose it is" "A whole life in front of you" "A whole life" "You could do anything, live anywhere

she was now proud of and pleased with, a truth she had not only come to terms with but welcomed openly, with every fiery molecule of her being. A truth that she scribbled hastily but firmly, pressing deep into the paper with the nib, in capital letters, in the first-person present tense. A truth that was the beginning and seed of everything possible. A former curse and a present blessing. Three simple words containing the power and potential of a multiverse. I AM ALIVE.

I soon discovered the Hat and Feathers was a misleading name. In it there was no hat, and absolutely no feathers. There were just heavily inebriated people with red faces laughing at their own jokes. This, I soon discovered, was a typical pub. The 'pub' was an invention of humans living in England, designed as compensation for the fact that they were humans living in England. I rather liked the place.

Places don't matter to people anymore. Places aren't the point. People are only ever half present where they are these days. They always have at least one foot in the great digital nowhere.

Between life and death there is a library,' she said. 'And within that library, the shelves go on for ever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived.

It is so easy, while trapped in just the one life, to imagine that times of sadness or tragedy or failure or fear are a result of that particular existence. That it is a by-product of living a certain way, rather than simply living .

Hope is a beautiful thing to find in art or stories or music.

Mrs Elm studied Nora hard, as if reading a passage in a book she had read before but had just found it contained a new meaning. '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.

But you could be anything you want to be, Nora. Think of all that possibility. It's exciting. Yes. I suppose it is. A whole life in front of you. A whole life. You could do anything, live anywhere.

The weirdest thing about a mind is that you can have the most intense things going on in there but no one else can see them.

is about finding the right person to hurt you?

Of course, most parents love their children instantly. But I mention it here because I still find it a remarkable thing. Where was that love before? Where did you acquire it from? The way it is suddenly there, total and complete, as sudden as grief, but in reverse, is one of the wonders about being human.

A person was like a city. You couldn't let a few less desirable parts put you off the whole. (...) the good stuff makes it worthwhile.

because for pain to be felt there must be a living presence – a me – to feel it.

Check how a tweet/photo/status update is going down (and keep checking). Want to go offline, without going offline.

When you die, the last thing you want is for your death to leak out and infect those left behind, for those loved ones to become a kind of living dead. And yet, inevitably, that often happens. It has happened to me. But I sense it is getting closer. Life. I sense it, just inches ahead of me.

To feel hope you don't need to be in a great situation. You just need to understand that things will change.