Explore Quotes by Matt Haig

The weirdest thing about a mind is that you can have the most intense things going on in there, but no one else can see them.

I have always enjoyed vampire stuff without ever having been a full vampire geek. I suppose I love the idea of blood thirst because it can say so much about us, not simply about addiction but about all those desires that can tear a family apart.

If you took away all pain, if everyone lived forever, everything would be bland, flat and boring; there would be no reason for art, music, newspapers, love because we would all be in a mono state of happiness.

Thinking about death makes you analyse what life is. Anxiety makes you curious, and curiosity leads to understanding. I wouldn't be a writer without depression.

There are two types of friends: actual friends, and the other kind.

Depression is an illness. It is not a ticket to genius. It is not an interesting personality quirk. It is horrible and all-consuming and really hurts.

Teenagers watch and listen to all kinds of things. It is the nature of being a teenager to seek out intense stuff. Stuff about death and sex and love and fear. Teenagers are the bravest, most curious, most philosophical, most open-minded readers there are, which is why so many less-than-young adults like writing for them.

Maybe love is just about finding the person you can be your weird self with.

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.

If you can't give children optimism, then what are you doing?

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 in some ways the best readers because their imaginations haven't been narrowed down by boring things like jobs and the realities of money and capitalism.

Human brains - in terms of cognition and emotion and consciousness - are essentially the same as they were at the time of Shakespeare or Jesus or Cleopatra or the Stone Age. They are not evolving with the pace of change.

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.

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.

There aren't any fences to the imagination, and so there shouldn't be any for books.

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.

Words are the essence of culture. Books are pure essence. They are not for women or for men, but for all of us. Without books, civilisation falls into the dark ages.

My early novels were written in quite a dark place. I stand by them, but I would never write them again. I think it is subversive to embrace emotional optimism, because it goes against the grain.

Boys don't cry. But they do. We do. I do. I weep all the time.

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.