Matt Haig
We often joke about men moaning about being ill, whether it's man flu or anything else. We want them to be silent and strong about these things. And that's quite dangerous when it comes to depression, because talking about it helps. People bottle it up until it's too late.
I think it is a luxury and privilege to be sane and well and pessimistic. Because with depression, you have no other option. You don't want that pessimism, because it is crushing you and keeping you down at the bottom of the well.
Boys don't cry. But they do. We do. I do. I weep all the time.
I want life. I want to feel it and live it. I want, for as much of the time as possible in this blink-of-an-eye existence we have, to feel all that can be felt.
However much in the foreground depression feels, you are separate to it. This is going to sound cheesy, but I'd say you are the sky. A cloud comes and dominates the sky. But the sky is still the sky. Depression tells you everything is going to get worse, but that's a symptom. Don't give depression power - constantly discredit it.
The implication that depressed people are fundamentally irresponsible is a deeply damaging and counterproductive one. Winston Churchill was a depressive. He didn't just fly planes; he was in charge of the Royal Air Force.
The aim of any writer, even a fantasy writer, is the pursuit of truth.
It took me at least all my 20s and some of my 30s to get the confidence to realise I could just write about what I wanted to write about without having to pass a test or look super clever.
Depression, for me, wasn't a dulling but a sharpening, an intensifying, as though I had been living my life in a shell, and now the shell wasn't there. It was total exposure.
Books are our umbilical cord to life. They connect us deeply, and with more meaning, to the world. They aren't about escaping from ourselves but expanding ourselves and finding within us the tools we need to survive.
When I was young, there was no such thing as YA. You simply went from reading children's novels to reading adult novels. So one year, I was reading Tove Jansson, and the next year, I was reading Stephen King.
To make 'depression' synonymous with 'dangerous' is as bad as saying 'Muslim' is synonymous with 'terrorist.'
Depressives have led countries, won wars, flown rockets to the moon, made great music. Don't let depression stop you employing someone, and never let it cause you to judge them. Depression is not a person. Like any other illness, it is something that happens to a person. It shouldn't define them.
Writing can be fun. I think the challenge is to convey interesting things in accessible ways, and that's what I aim to do in books.
How clear can I put this? I am not denying female oppression; I am trying to stop it by calling for a more fluid masculinity.
I'm a firm believer in the connection between the body and the mind: feed one, feed both. I like to run, but only short distances, and fast. I'm no good at long distance. More than six miles, and the knees start to go.
Depression is a horrible, potentially life-threatening illness - but the lives it threatens are almost always those of the people who suffer from it.
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. It is not you. It is simply something that happens to you.
Teenagers are philosophers. They are thinking about the big things like existence and identity at a time when their identities are changing so fast.
My mum always said I devoured 'The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe' at the tender age of four, but frankly, I think that might be a touch of maternal exaggeration.
There is certainly no one 'type' of writer who deliberately draws on Shakespeare. In fact, there's a strong argument that everyone writing in the English language is influenced by Shakespeare because, to a considerable degree, he shaped that language.
Everyone is a comedy. If people are laughing at you, they just don't quite understand the joke that is themselves.Collection: People
A book is a map. There will be times in your life when you will feel lost and confused. The way back to yourself is through reading. There is not a problem in existence that has not been eased, somewhere and at some time, by a book. I want you to remember that.The answers have all been written. And the more you read, the more you will know how to find your way through those difficult times.Collection: Confused
Make sure, as often as possible, you are doing something you’d be happy to die doing.Collection: Dies
Avice for a human. 87. Dark matter is needed to hold galaxies together. Your mind is a Galaxy. More dark than light. But the light makes it worthwhile. 88. Which is to say: don't kill yourself. Even when the darkness is total. Always know that life is not still. Time is space. You are moving through that galaxy. Wait for the stars.Collection: Stars
The single biggest act of bravery or madness anyone can do is the act of change.Collection: Bravery
And most of all, books. They were, in and of themselves, reasons to stay alive. Every book written is the product of a human mind in a particular state. Add all the books together and you get the end sum of humanity. Every time I read a great book I felt I was reading a kind of map, a treasure map, and the treasure I was being directed to was in actual fact myself.Collection: Book
Knowledge is finite. Wonder is infinite.Collection: Wonder
Love is scary because it pulls you in with an intense force, a supermassive black hole which looks like nothing from the outside but from the inside challenges every reasonable thing you know. You lose yourself, like I lost myself, in the warmest of annihilations.Collection: Love Is
Obey your head. Obey your heart. Obey your gut. In fact, obey everything except commands.Collection: Heart
This was, I would later realise, a planet of things wrapped inside things. Food inside wrappers. Bodies inside clothes. Contempt inside smiles. Everything was hidden away.Collection: Clothes
You reach a certain age -- sometimes it's fifteen, sometimes it's forty-six -- and you realize the cliche you have adopted for yourself isn't working.Collection: Age
Advice for a human 86. To like something is to insult it. Love it or hate it. Be passionate. As civilisation advances, so does indifference. It is a disease. Immunize yourself with art. And love.Collection: Art
Kissing is what humans do when words have reached a place they can't escape from.Collection: Kissing
If you think something is ugly, look harder. Ugliness is just a failure of seeing.Collection: Thinking
Advice for a human. 81. You can't find happiness looking for the meaning of life. Meaning is only the third most important thing. It comes after loving and being. 82. If you think something is ugly, look harder. Ugliness is just a failure of seeing.Collection: Thinking
Dark matter is needed to hold galaxies together. Your mind is a Galaxy. More dark than light. But the light makes it worthwhile.Collection: Dark
Laughter, along with madness, seemed to be the only way out, the emergency exit for humans.Collection: Laughter
If getting drunk was how people forgot they were mortal, then hangovers were how they remembered.Collection: Hangover
Flowers, after love, must have been the best advert planet Earth had going for it.Collection: Flower
All that humans create serves solely to lessen the terror of existence.Collection: Existence
And how could I believe that Australian wine was automatically inferior to wine sourced from other regions on the planet when I had never drunk anything but liquid nitrogen?Collection: Believe
Vampire? Such a provocative word, wrapped in too many clichés and girly novels.Collection: Girly
There is only one genre in fiction, the genre is called book.Collection: Book
Beauty breeds beauty, truth triggers truth. The cure for writer's block is therefore to read.Collection: Block
The possibility of pain is where love stems fromCollection: Pain
Everyone represses everything. Do you think any of these "normal" human beings really do exactly what they want to do all the time? 'Course not. It's just the same. We're middle-class and we're British. Repression is in our veins.Collection: Thinking
You can't just stop technological progress. Even if one country stops researching artificial intelligence, some other countries will continue to do it. The real question is what to do with the technology. You can use exactly the same technology for very different social and political purposes. So I think people shouldn't be focused on the question of how to stop technological progress because this is impossible. Instead the question should be what kind of usage to make of the new technology. And here we still have quite a lot of power to influence the direction it's taking.Collection: Country
End-users not technologies shape the market. Consequently marketers need to stay abreast not only of technological developments but also of the way people respond to them.Collection: Technology