Quotes from Matt Haig

If one advances confidently, Thoreau had written in Walden, in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He'd also observed that part of this success was the product of being alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.

We can move against the current of life, and forever meet resistance, or we can let our thoughts flow, and become the free uncertain river.

This human was female. She was called Priti, which was pronounced "pretty" and means pretty. Unfortunate, given that she was human and, by her very nature, vomit-provoking.

Nora had also felt that simply to be in his presence was to commit some kind of invisible crime. Ever since the ligament injury that thwarted his rugby career, he'd had a sincere conviction that the universe was against him. And Nora was, at least she felt, considered by him as part of that same universal plan. From that moment in that car park she had felt she was really just an extension of the pain in his left knee. A walking wound.

Bands don't last. We'd have been a meteor shower. Over before we started. - Meteor showers are fucking beautiful.

Because I am clearly destined to be unhappy in other lives too. That is just me. I add nothing. I am wallowing in self-pity. I want to die.

People's minds across the world were filling with utopias that could never overlap.

I now realise it is perfectly possible for anyone to feel old. All they need to do is become a teacher.

I like this job. I can't right now think of a better purpose in life than to be a teacher. To teach feels like you are a guardian of time itself, protecting the future happiness of the world via the minds that are yet to shape it.

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.

No one is killed for witchcraft now.' 'Ignorance changes over time. But it is always there, and it remains just as lethal.

The American president is a motherfucker.

wanted to be somewhere he had never been. I wanted somewhere where I didn't have to feel his ghost. But the truth is, it only half-works, you know? Places are places and memories are memories and life is fucking life.

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

In nature,' wrote Alice Walker, 'nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they're still beautiful.

This was all meaningless without love.

There may be no visible threat and yet you can feel utterly terrified. It's all intense suspense, no action. It's like Jaws without the shark. But often there are sharks. Metaphorical, invisible sharks.. Maybe we would cope with the world better if we knew where those sharks were.

You could eat in the finest restaurants, you could partake in every sensual pleasure, you could sing on stage in Sao Paulo to twenty thousand people, you could soak up whole thunderstorms of applause, you could travel to the ends of the Earth, you could be followed by millions on the internet, you could win Olympic medals, but this was all meaningless without love.

When normality becomes madness, the only way to find sanity is by daring to be different.

Your worth is you. Your worth is your presence. Your worth is right there. Your worth isn't something you earn. Your worth isn't something you buy. Your worth isn't something you gain through status or popularity or stomach crunches or having a really chic kitchen. Your worth is your existence. You were born with worth, as all babies are, and that worth doesn't disappear simply because you have grown a little older. You are a human, being.

Maybe life was automatically better when the sun shone so confidently in April. Everything seemed more vivid, more colourful and alive than it had done in England.

yoga   A form of exercise based around stretching limbs, breathing slowly, and feeling superior.

Am descoperit ca, de fapt, cuvintele si povestile iti pun la dispozitie un soi de harti, moduri de a-ti gasi drumul inapoi catre tine insuti.

For instance, I find that being grimly aware of mortality can make me steadfastly determined to enjoy life where life can be enjoyed. It makes me value precious moments with my children, and with the woman I love. It adds intensity in bad ways, but also good ways.