Books should be right up there with exercise and diet as something that don't just entertain us but heal us. They tell us we are not alone and fix the pieces of us that can be shattered by reality. They are teachers, and they are friends, and we should never contemplate a world - or a life - without them.
Interpretation
Books are essential for healing and understanding our lives; they provide comfort and knowledge.
In this quote, Matt Haig emphasizes the profound impact that books have on our well-being. He suggests that just as exercise and a balanced diet are vital for physical health, reading serves an equally crucial role in our emotional and mental health. Books not only entertain us but also provide solace and companionship during difficult times, reminding us that we are not alone. They offer wisdom and guidance, helping us to piece together the fragments of our experiences shaped by reality.
In practice
During a book club discussion, you could say, 'As Matt Haig highlights, books heal us and should be valued just like exercise.'
Being a depressive should not imply danger any more than being a man or even a human should. Mental illness isn't a them/us issue; we are all on the scale somewhere. So we must be very careful to resist ignorance and combat the stigma that leads to dangerous silence.
It can be difficult for people to talk about it, because there still is that stigma around mental illness. But I would encourage people to do that, because they'll be surprised once they do 'come out' how many other people have had similar experiences.
Understand that thoughts are thoughts. If they are unreasonable, reason with them, even if you have no reason left. You are the observer of your mind, not its victim.
We need, ultimately, to be able to view mental health with the same clear-headedness we show when talking about physical health.
You are no less or more of a man or a woman or a human for having depression than you would be for having cancer or cardiovascular disease or a car accident.
You don't have to be a creative maverick to have a troubled mind. You just have to be human. There is no 'us' and 'them.' No one is one hundred per cent healthy, physically or mentally.
The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn.
A library in the middle of a community is a cross between an emergency exit, a life raft and a festival. They are cathedrals of the mind; hospitals of the soul; theme parks of the imagination. On a cold, rainy island, they are the only sheltered public spaces where you are not a consumer, but a citizen, instead.
In talking with scholars, I observe that they lost on ruder companions those years of boyhood which alone could give imaginative literature a religious and infinite quality in their esteem.
Intelligence and proper education will give you independence of spirit.
And let no one suppose that I claim that just living can be taught for, in a word, I hold that there does not exist an art of the kind which can implant sobriety and justice into depraved natures. Nevertheless, I do think that the study of political discourse can help more than any other thing to stimulate and form such qualities of character
I am too fond of reading books to care to write them.
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