852 Quotes by Matt Haig

I understand that the way you stop time is by stopping being ruled by it.[Tom Hazard]

I am afraid that is, as they say, impossible. Time moves forwards. We have the luxury of time but we still can’t reverse it. We can’t stop it. We are one-way traffic, just the same as all these mayflies.

It wasn’t just the loss of people I had known but also the loss of myself. The loss of who I had been when I had been with them.

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

You can’t choose where you are born, you can’t decide who won’t leave you, you can’t choose much. A life has unchangeable tides the same as history does. But there is still room inside it for choice. For decisions.

History isn’t something you need to bring to life. History already is alive. We are history. History isn’t politicians or kings and queens. History is everyone. It is everything. It’s that coffee. You could explain much of the whole history of capitalism and empire and slavery just by talking about coffee. The amount of blood and misery that has taken place for us to sit here and sip coffee out of paper cups is incredible.

Well, you can take that fire and put it in the ocean.

I need to tame the past. That is what history is, the teaching and telling of it. It is a way to control it and order it. To turn it into a pet. But history you have lived is different to history you read in a book or on a screen. And some things in the past can't be tamed.

Accept feelings and accept that they are just that: feelings.