Quotes from Matt Haig

It might sound dramatic to say the planet could be heading for a breakdown. But we do know beyond doubt that in all kinds of ways – technologically, environmentally, politically – the world is changing. And fast. So we need, more than ever, to know how to edit the world, so it can never break us down.

Letters to a Young Poet—Rainer Maria Rilke Poems—Emily Dickinson Henry David Thoreau's journal When Things Fall Apart—Pema Chödrön The House at Pooh Corner—A. A. Milne Bird by Bird—Anne Lamott Meditations—Marcus Aurelius Tao Te Ching—Laozi Serious Concerns—Wendy Cope Dream Work—Mary Oliver

Pressure makes us, though. You start off as coal and the pressure makes you a diamond.' She didn't correct his knowledge of diamonds. She didn't tell him that while coal and diamonds are both carbon, coal is too impure to be able, under whatever pressure, to become a diamond. According to science, you start off as coal and you end up as coal. Maybe that was the real-life lesson.

Growing up, she and Joe had always joked about their hometown, the way teenagers do, and used to say that HMP Bedford was the inner prison and the rest of the town was just the outer prison, and any chance you had to escape you should take it.

I wished I had a new wound, just so she could attend to me.

A person was like a city. You couldn't let a few lees desirable parts put you off the whole. There may be bits you don't like, a few dodgy side streets and suburbs, but the good stuff makes it worthwhile.

Life is not a ladder to climb a puzzle to solve a key to find a destination to reach a problem to fix

What was reality? An objective truth? A collective illusion? A majority opinion? The product of historical understanding? A bream?

And that gave her hope, and even the sheer sentimental gratitude of being able to be here, knowing she had the potential to enjoy watching radiant skies and mediocre Ryan Bailey comedies and be happy listening to music and conversation and the beat of her own heart.

Christianity   The human's most popular religion, partly because it gave its followers stories about people who had babies without sex, and who died without dying. It also made sure, via the bible, that there were enough possible interpretations to satisfy every human belief and prejudice.

Right then, I found a strange but real comfort in the pain.

If the modern world is making us feel bad, then it doesn't matter what else we have going for us, because feeling bad sucks. And feeling bad when we are told there is no reason to, well, that sucks even more.

Las revistas son muy populares, aunque ningún humano se siente mejor después de leerlas; es más, su principal objetivo parece ser generar una sensación de inferioridad en el lector que, a su vez, le crea la necesidad de adquirir algo, cosa que hacen, para, sin falta, sentirse peor y tener que comprar otra revista para ver lo siguiente que pueden comprar. Es un círculo vicioso eterno e ingrato que recibe el nombre de capitalismo y que goza de gran popularidad.

If you truly feel part of a bigger picture, if you can see yourself in other people and nature, if this you becomes something bigger than the individual you, then you never truly depart the world when you die. You exist as long as life exists. Because the life you feel inside you is part of the same life force that exists in every living thing.

When you stay too long in a place, you forget just how big an expanse the world is. You get no sense of the length of those longitude and latitudes. Just as, she supposed, it is hard to have a sense of the vastness inside any one person.

Because, Nora, sometimes the only way to learn is to live

The books were all green. Greens of multifarious shades. Some of these volumes were a murky swamp green, some a bright and light chartreuse, some a bold emerald and others the verdant shade of summer lawns.

No. The Book of Regrets is getting lighter. There's a lot of white space in there now . . . It seems that you have spent all your life saying things that you aren't really thinking. This is one of your barriers.' 'Barriers?

The comfort, then, is the weird truth that in one sense we have most in common with others when we feel awkward and alone. Isolation is as universal as it gets.

In quel momento pensò a come sarebbe stato accettarsi completamente. Ogni singolo errore. Ogni singola cicatrice sul suo corpo. Ogni singolo sogno mai realizzato, ogni singolo dolore che aveva provato.

Puedes tenerlo todo y no sentir nada».

LIFE IS HARD. It may be beautiful and wonderful but it is also hard. The way people seem to cope is by not thinking about it too much. But some people are not going to be able to do that.

because they believed in free will. Ha! Humans

Death is the opposite of possibility.