852 Quotes by Matt Haig

You see, his mother has thrown me out of the house because I was unfaithful to her. Or rather the faith I had wasn’t the right kind. Given the absence of mind-reading technology, humans believe monogamy is possible.

You make the wrong decision in the present and it haunts you, just as the Treaty of Versaillles in nineteen nineteen sowed the ground for Hitler to take power in nineteen thirty-three, so every present moment is paying for a future one. Just one wrong turn can get you very lost. What you do in the present stays with you. It comes back. You don’t get away with anything.

Life wasn’t ever one ingredient. It was several. And some flavors were bad and some were good, but love was the strongest of all. If you were loved, you had everything.

You are not the most intelligent creature in the universe. You are not even the most intelligent creature on your planet. The tonal language in the song of a humpback whale displays more complexity than the entire works of Shakespeare. It is not a competition. Well, it is. But don’t worry about it.

Obey your head. Obey your heart. Obey your gut. In fact, obey everything except commands.

Employment is becoming a dehumanizing process, as if humans existed to serve work, rather than work to serve humans.

Mental wellbeing counts as much as physical wellbeing – indeed, it is part of physical wellbeing.

A wave can kill you. Or you can ride it. It’s sometimes more dangerous to shy away. You can’t live your life in fear. You have to be prepared to get on your board and stand on your feet. If you are in the barrel of a wave you have to ignore the fear. You have to be in that moment. You have to carve on through. You get scared, and the next thing you know you are off your board and smashing your head on a rock. I’m never going to live in fear.

Another thing. Stimulation. Excitement. The kinds found in new places. Sometimes this can be terrifying, but it can also be liberating. In a familiar place, your mind focuses solely on itself. There is nothing new it needs to notice about your bedroom. No potential external threats, just internal ones. By forcing yourself into a new physical space, preferably in a different country, you end up inevitably focusing a bit more on the world outside your head.