Quotes from Matt Haig

You're overthinking it.' 'I have anxiety. I have no other type of thinking available.

And that sadness is intrinsically part of the fabric of happiness. You can't have one without the other. Of course, they come in different degrees and quantities. But there is no life where you can be in a state of sheer happiness for ever. And imagining there is just breeds more unhappiness in the life you're in.

Wherever you are, at any moment, try and find something beautiful. A face, a line out of a poem, the clouds out of a window, some graffiti, a wind farm. Beauty cleans the mind.

And most of all, books. They were, in and of themselves, reasons to stay alive. Every book written is the product of a human mind in a particular state. Add all the books together and you get the end sum of humanity. Every time I read a great book I felt I was reading a kind of map, a treasure map, and the treasure I was being directed to was in actual fact myself.

There is no standard normal. Normal is subjective. There are seven billion versions of normal on this planet.

Between life and death there is a library, and within that library, the shelves go on forever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be if you had made other choices… Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?

Sometimes just to say your own truth out loud is enough to find others like you.

Make sure, as often as possible, you are doing something you'd be happy to die doing.

The paradox of volcanoes was that they were symbols of destruction but also life. Once the lava slows and cools, it solidifies and then breaks down over time to become soil - rich, fertile soil. She wasn't a black hole, she decided. She was a volcano. And like a volcano she couldn't run away from herself. She'd have to stay there and tend to that wasteland. She could plant a forest inside herself.

No one will understand you. It is not, ultimately, that important. What is important is that you understand you.

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 love is just about finding the person you can be your weird self with.

You see, doing one thing differently is very often the same as doing everything differently.

A paradox: The things you don't need to live—books, art, cinema, wine, and so on—are the things you need to live.

To other people, it sometimes seems like nothing at all. You are walking around with your head on fire and no one can see the flames.

And even if you were a pawn - maybe we all are - then you should remember that a pawn is the most magical piece of all. It might look small and ordinary but it isn't. because a pawn is never just a pawn. A pawn is a queen-in-waiting. All you need to do is find a way to keep moving forward. One square after another. And you can get to the other side and unlock all kinds of power.

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.

If you are an atheist as I am, Shakespeare can be your ideal. Everything is within Shakespeare, especially in his 10 greatest plays. They have life, meaning, understanding, the whole lot.

Thinking about death makes you analyse what life is. Anxiety makes you curious, and curiosity leads to understanding. I wouldn't be a writer without depression.

Lots of children have had dark experiences, and if they're not having direct dark experiences, they are thinking about things and learning that life is fragile. You have to acknowledge that side of life to be able to then offer comfort and hope and goodwill.

There is certainly no one 'type' of writer who deliberately draws on Shakespeare. In fact, there's a strong argument that everyone writing in the English language is influenced by Shakespeare because, to a considerable degree, he shaped that language.

Like most art forms, writing is part instinct and part craft. The craft part is the part that can be taught, and that can make a crucial difference to lots of writers.

Writing can be fun. I think the challenge is to convey interesting things in accessible ways, and that's what I aim to do in books.

I suppose the book I really remember loving as a child was one called 'The Outsiders' by S.E. Hinton, about a gang of kids from the wrong side of the tracks in Sixties Oklahoma. I grew up in the Eighties in Nottinghamshire, but this tale of troubled, but essentially good, kids - or 'greasers' - was something I completely connected with.