Quotes from Matt Haig

So long as there are still books on the shelves, you are never trapped. Every book is a potential escape.

Why want another universe if this one has dogs?

Curiosity and passion are the enemies of anxiety. Even when I fell into anxiety, if I get curious enough about something outside of me it can help pull me out. Music, art, film, nature, conversation, words. Find passion as large as your fear. The way out of your mind is via the world.

Talk. Listen. Encourage talking. Encourage listening. Keep adding to the conversation. Stay on the lookout for those wanting to join in the conversation. Keep reiterating, again and again, that depression is not something you 'admit to', it is not something you have to blush about, it is a human experience.

Human beings, as a rule, simply don't accept things that don't fit their worldview.

She realised that 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.

The longer you live, the harder it becomes. To grab them. Each little moment as it arrives. To be living in something other than the past or the future. To be actually here. 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?

To experience beauty on Earth, you needed to experience pain and to know mortality. That is why so much that is beautiful on this planet has to do with time passing and the Earth turning. Which might also explain why to look at such natural beauty was to also feel sadness and a craving for a life unlived.

Fear was when you wandered into a cellar and worried that the door would close shut. Despair was when the door closed and locked behind you.

It's okay to be the teacup with a chip in it. That's the one with a story.

And besides, libraries aren't just about books. They are one of the few public spaces we have left which don't like our wallets more than us.

To lose someone you love is the very worst thing in the world. It creates an invisible hole that you feel you are falling down and will never end. People you love make the world real and solid and when they suddenly go away forever, nothing feels solid any more.

We only know what we perceive. Everything we experience is ultimately just our perception of it. "It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see."' 'You know Thoreau?

Every second of every day we are entering a new universe. And we spend so much time wishing our lives were different, comparing ourselves to other people and to other versions of ourselves, when really most lives contain degrees of good and degrees of bad.

Read a book without thinking about finishing it. Just read it. Enjoy every word, sentence, and paragraph. Don't wish for it to end, or for it to never end.

Maybe that is what it takes to love someone. Finding a happy mystery you would like to unravel for ever.

Nora wanted to live in a world where no cruelty existed, but the only worlds she had available to her were worlds with humans in them.

That's the odd thing about depression and anxiety. It acts like an intense fear of happiness, even as you yourself consciously want that happiness more than anything. So if it catches you smiling, even fake smiling, then - well, that stuff's just not allowed and you know it, so here comes ten tons of counterbalance.

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 on 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.

It is not the lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It's the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people's worst enemy. We can't tell if any of those other versions would have been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on.

Hate is a pointless emotion to have inside you. It is like eating a scorpion to punish it for stinging you.

We often find ourselves wishing for more hours in the day, but that wouldn't help anything. The problem, clearly, isn't that we have a shortage of time. It's more that we have an overload of everything else.

Nothing fixes a thing so firmly in the memory as the wish to forget it.

Happiness is not good for the economy. We are encouraged, continually, to be a little bit dissatisfied with ourselves.