Quotes from Matt Haig

The letters fading like retreating strangers in a fog.

That is the nature of things. History was -is- a one-way street. You have to keep walking forwards. But you don't always need to look ahead. Sometimes you can just look around and be happy right where you are.

And, just as it only takes a moment to die, it only takes a moment to live. You just close your eyes and let every futile fear slip away. And then, in this new state, free from fear, you ask yourself: who am I? If I could live without doubt what would I do?

She didn't even need a large house and the perfect family. She just needed potential. And she was nothing if not potential. She wondered why she had never seen it before.

Maybe it wasn't the lack of achievements that had made her and her brother's parents unhappy, maybe it was the expectation to achieve in the first place.

So, you see? Sometimes regrets aren't based on fact at all. Sometimes regrets are just . . . A load of bullshit.

I love you," she said. And I knew the point of love right then. The point of love was to help you survive.

Remember when we were young enough not to fear tomorrow or mourn yesterday And we were just Us And time was just Now And we were in Life

Acres of disappointment and monotony and hurts and rivalries but with flashes of wonder and beauty.

Hope, in its simplest form, is the acceptance of possibility.

Is happiness the aim?' 'I don't know. I suppose I want my life to mean something. I want to do something good.

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. (…) It's not what you look at; it's what you see.

or if they had got married because marriage was something you did at the appropriate time with the nearest available person.

I am afraid that is, as they say, impossible. Time moves forwards. We have the luxury of time but we still can't reverse it. We can't stop it. We are one-way traffic, just the same as all these mayflies.

Adding anxiety to depression is a bit like adding cocaine to alcohol. It presses fast-forward on the whole experience.

Maybe in some lives you just float around and expect nothing else and don't even try to change.

At the beginning of a game, there are no variations. There is only one way to set up a board. There are nine million variations after the first six moves. And after eight moves there are two hundred and eighty-eight billion different positions. And those possibilities keep growing. There are more possible ways to play a game of chess than the amount of atoms in the observable universe.

every day a retreat from who she'd imagined she'd be.

she hadn't tried to end her life because she was miserable, but because she had managed to convince herself that there was no way out of her misery

I want to make a forest of a moment and live in that forest for ever

How to stop time: kiss. How to travel in time: read. How to escape time: music.  How to feel time: write. How to release time: breathe.

After all, we aren't just who we are born. We are who we become.

People with stamina aren't made any differently to anyone else… The only difference is they have a clear goal in mind, and a determination to get there. Stamina is essential to stay focused in a life filled with distraction. It is the ability to stick to a task when your body and mind are at their limit

Swimmer. Musician. Philosopher. Spouse. Traveller. Glaciologist. Happy. Loved. Nothing.