Quotes from Matt Haig

Many of us have every material thing we need, so the job of marketing is now to tie economy to our emotions, to make us feel like we need more by making us want things we never needed before. We are made to feel poor on thirty thousand pounds a year. To feel poorly travelled if we have been to only ten other countries. To feel too old if we have a wrinkle. To feel ugly if we aren't photoshopped and filtered.

No one has ever found a Neolithic cave painting of someone waking up stressed because they slept through their alarm and missed their nine o'clock management meeting.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – / I took the one less travelled by, / And that has made all the difference . . .' 'What if there are more than two roads diverging in the wood? What if there are more roads than trees? What if there is no end to the choices you could make? What would Robert Frost do then?

don't have to play every game to know what winning feels like. We don't have to hear every piece of music in the world to understand music. We don't have to have tried every variety of grape from every vineyard to know the pleasure of wine. Love and laughter and fear and pain are universal currencies. We just have to close our eyes and savour the taste of the drink in front of us and listen to the song as it plays.

Eu sunt tu si tu esti eu. Suntem singuri, insa nu suntem singuri. Suntem prinsi in timp, dar si infiniti. Suntem facuti din carne, dar si din praf de stele.

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.

You are the product of some strange interaction between my mind and the multiverse, some simplification of the quantum wave function or whatever it is.

It was strange, the significance of that moment for me and the insignificance of it for her. But then I reminded myself that when galaxies collide they pass right through.

She didn't want to die. And she didn't want to live any other life than the one that was hers. The one that could be a messy struggle, but it was her messy struggle. A beautiful messy struggle.

a planet of things wrapped inside things. Food inside wrappers. Bodies inside clothes. Contempt inside smiles. Everything was hidden away.

Be depressed on Mondays and happy on Saturdays. Not the other way round. It will annoy people.

In mintea ta, schimba numele tuturor zilelor cu sambata. Si schimba numele muncii cu joaca.

In this world of interdependence, opposite emotions are also connected. As William Blake put it "joy and woe are woven fine". I know this because one of the reasons I love life is because I was once suicidal. I have sincerely known moments of content in my life for having gone through years of hell.

Anton steals a glance back at me and I smile and confuse him more. I understand. The way you can get caught up in things, find yourself floating, heading towards trouble you can hardly avoid.

Erwin Schrödinger . . .' 'He of the cat.

We are too aware of numerical time and not aware enough of natural time.

To see how things would be different if you had made other choices . . . Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?

There was such a yearning and energy to it. I closed my eyes. I could not describe here on the page how I felt. The very reason such music exists is because it is a language that couldn't be communicated in any other way. But all I can say is that I felt suddenly alive again.

Sa nu crezi ca stii. Sa stii ca tu crezi.

Forever, Emily Dickinson said, is composed of nows. But how do you inhabit the now you are in? How do you stop the ghosts of all the other nows from getting in? How, in short, do you live? I am drifting away.

If we keep going in a straight line we'll get out of here.

I now avoid trying to see myself as one thing or the other. I'm not a happy person or a sad person. I am not a calm person or a fearful person. I am a happy, sad, calm, fearful person. I let myself feel it all. And that way I am always open to new feelings.

Henry David Thoreau's Walden, both

Is there a life where we are still together?