Quotes from Matt Haig

as C. S. Lewis once put it, "The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say 'My tooth is aching' than to say 'My heart is broken.

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.

Between life and death there is a library,' she said. '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?

No. It's about everything. It seems impossible to live without hurting people.' 'That's because it is.' 'So why live at all?

But I still don't get why you let me go into that life if you knew Volts was going to be dead anyway. You could have told me. You could have just told me I wasn't a bad cat owner. Why didn't you?' 'Because, Nora, sometimes the only way to learn is to live.

Jamás vivirás si te dedicas a buscar el sentido de la vida.

Such as the Dancing Plague of 1518, where, over the course of a month, 400 people in Strasbourg danced themselves to the point of collapse—and in some cases death—for no understandable reason. No music was even playing.

The library was a little shelter of civilisation.

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.

Una persona è come una città. Non puoi permettere che alcune zone meno belle rovinino l'armonia del tutto. Ci possono essere posti che non ami, alcune strade secondarie e sobborghi poco raccomandabili, ma le parti belle la rendono degna di essere amata.

and could occasionally be arrogant in his opinions on art and film and music, but there was nothing overtly wrong with him. Well – now that she thought about it – he'd never been supportive of her music career

So, if and when they discover aliens they'd be really pretty unsettled because then we'd have to know, once and for all, that there is nothing really unique or special about us at all.

killing is not a stone you throw away, it is a boomerang that comes back and gets you on the head.

if books had to replicate our exact experience of the world to be useful, the only books worth reading would be written by ourselves.

Librarians are just like search engines, except they smile and they talk to me and they don't give me paid-for advertising when they are trying to help. And they have actual hearts.

Robots and computers are taking people's jobs. Employers are taking people's weekends. Employment is becoming a dehumanizing process, as if humans existed to serve work, rather than work to serve humans.

Legacy. What a meaningless thing. All that work for a future in which they don't appear.

Between life and death there is a library' she said. 'And within that library, the shelves go on for ever. 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?

Not every fruit has to be an apple.

She'd been petrified of motherhood. The fear of a deeper depression. She couldn't look after herself, let alone anyone else.

Sometimes regrets are just....a load of bullshit

Marcelo took a sharp intake of breath, as if the next question was something he had to swim under.

Because a pawn is never just a pawn. A pawn is a queen-in-waiting.

When you watch the news and see members of your species in turmoil, do not think there is nothing you can do. But know it is not done by watching the news.