Quotes from Matt Haig

In becoming everyone, you are becoming no one.

When you look up at the sky, on a clear night, and see thousands of stars and planets, realise that very little is happening on most of them. The important stuff is further away.

Depression makes thinkers out of all of us.

Only the sertraline stopped her crying.

Depressie is ook kleiner dan jij. Zij is altijd kleiner dan jij, zelfs al lijkt ze onmetelijk. Ze zit binnen in jou, niet andersom. Als een donkere wolk die overtrekt, maar - als dat de metafoor is- dan ben jij de lucht. Jij was er eerder. En een luchtloze wolk bestaat niet, maar een wolkeloze lucht wel.

Car accident, drug overdose, drowning, a bout of fatal food poisoning, choking on an apple, choking on a cookie, choking on a vegan hot dog, choking on a non-vegan hot dog, every illness it was possible for you to catch or contract . . . You have died in every way you can, at any time you could.

Problemen met de geestelijke gezondheid zijn geen: Massahysterie. Modegril. Bevlieging. Trend bij sterren. Gevolg van toegenomen bewustzijn van geestelijke problematiek. Gemakkelijk gespreksonderwerp. En: geestelijke problemen zijn niet meer wat ze geweest zijn.

You can never run out of possibilities.

And it was different because she was alive, when she had so nearly been dead. And because that had been her choice. A choice to live.

The world was becoming faster and louder, and the social systems were becoming as chaotic and fragmented as jazz scores.

Politeness is often fear. Kindness is always courage. But caring is what makes you human. Care more, become more human

I have bemoaned people who say they feel old, but I now realize it is perfectly possible for anyone to feel old. All they need to do is become a teacher.

Parecía que ni siquiera morir se le daba bien a Nora. Era una sensación familiar, la de sentirse incompleta en casi todos los sentidos posibles. Un rompecabezas humano sin terminar. Una vida inconclusa y una muerte inconclusa también

I mean, it would have made things a lot easier if we understood there was no way of living that can immunise you against sadness. And that sadness is intrinsically part of the fabric of happiness.

London, now You understand quite completely that the main reason of history is : humans don't learn from history. The twenty-first century could still turn out to a bad cover version of the twentieth, but what could we do? People's minds across the world were filling with utopias that could never overlap. It was a recipe for disaster, but, alas, a familiar one. Empathy was waning, as it often had. Peace was made of porcelain, as it always was. -how to stop time- C'est vrai.

Every life contains many millions of decisions. Some big, some small. But every time one decision is taken over another, the outcomes differ. An irreversible variation occurs, which in turn leads to further variations . . .

played the piano every night and made the most superficial acquaintances with poets and painters and artists that often only lasted a night.

Ik ben verlamd van angst voor de dwaalwegen van mijn geest, want ik weet waar hij allemaal al is geweest.

What we are and what we mean are different things. It's fine. The world makes it very hard not to be a prick.

madness is sometimes a question of time, and sometimes of postcode. Basically, the key rule is, if you want to appear sane on Earth you have to be in the right place, wearing the right clothes, saying the right things, and only stepping on the right kind of grass.

I wanted to be dead. No. That's not quite right. I didn't want to be dead, I just didn't want to be alive. Death was something that scared me. And death only happens to people who have been living. There were infinitely more people who had never been alive. I wanted to be one of those people. That old classic wish. To never have been born. To have been one of the three hundred million sperm that hadn't made it.

I think it is easy to imagine there are easier paths,' she said, realising something for the first time. 'But maybe there are no easy paths. There are just paths.

Want, is an interesting word. It means lack. Sometimes if we fill that lack with something else the original want disappears entirely. Maybe you have a lack problem rather than a want problem

There are more possible ways to play a game og chess than the amount of atoms in the observable universe. So it gets very messy. And there is no right way to play; there are many ways. In chess, as in life, possibility is the basis of everything.