Quotes from Matt Haig

Accept. Don't fight things, feel them. Tension is about opposition, relaxation is about letting go.

Laughter, I realized, was the reverberating sound of a truth hitting a lie.

Personally, for me, I am happy that I largely mended myself without the aid of medication, and feel that having to experience the pain minus any "anesthetic" meant I got to know my pain very well, and become alert to the subtle upward or downward shifts in my mind.

Why do so many men still kill themselves? What is going wrong? The common answer is that men, traditionally, see mental illness as a sign of weakness and are reluctant to seek help. Boys don't cry.

In all chaos there is a cosmos," said Carl Jung, "in all disorder a secret order.

I was better. I was better. But it only takes a doubt. A drop of ink falls into a clear glass of water and clouds the whole thing. So the moment after I realized I wasn't perfectly well was the moment I realized I was still very ill indeed.

Just read. Books are possibilities. They are escape routes. They give you options when you have none. Each one can be a home for an uprooted mind.

Be brave. Be strong. Breathe, and keep going. You will thank yourself later.

Be alive. That is your supreme duty to the world.

Everyone knew that the way to make something even lovelier was to put it in a pie.

It's such a weird thing for young people to look at distorted images of things they should be.' —Daisy Ridley, on why she quit Instagram

If you failed one test, there was a test to see why. I suppose they loved tests so much because they believed in free will.

You are more than the sum of your particles. And that is quite a sum.

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.

This was a life where she put four exclamation points in a row. That was probably what happier, less uptight people did.

Facebook is where everyone lies to their friends. Twitter is where they tell the truth to strangers.

Be humble because you are made of earth. Be noble, for you are made of stars.

10. Breathe. Breathe deep and pure and smooth. Concentrate on it. Breathing is the pace you set your life at. It's the rhythm of the song of you. It's how to get back to the centre of things. The centre of yourself. When the world wants to take you in every other direction. It was the first thing you learned to do. The most essential and simple thing you do. To be aware of breath is to remember you are alive.

he believed that the more people were connected on social media, the lonelier society became. 'That's why everyone hates each other nowadays,' he reckoned. 'Because they are overloaded with non-friend friends.

She filled in the blanks that worry and darkness had left in its wake. She was my mind-double. My life-sitter. My literal other half when half of me had gone. She covered for me, waiting patiently like a war wife, during my absence from myself.

Words – spoken or written – are what connect us to the world, and so speaking about it to people, and writing about this stuff, helps connect us to each other, and to our true selves.

A true friend is rare a true friend is the best a true friend is needed like east needs west.

A book is a map .... There will be times in your life when you will feel lost and confused. The way back to yourself is through reading. There is not a problem in existence that has not been eased, somewhere and at some time, by a book. ... The answers have all been written. And the more you read, the more you will know how to find your way through those difficult times.

The problem lying behind the lack of human fulfillment was a shortage not just of time but of imagination. They found a day that worked for them and then stuck to it and repeated it, at least between Monday and Friday. Even if it didn't work for them—as was usually the case—they stuck to it anyway. Then they'd alter things a bit and do something a little bit more fun on Saturday and Sunday.