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Matt Haig

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Maybe Shakespeare was right. Maybe all the world was a stage. Maybe without the act everything would fall apart. The key to happiness wasn't being yourself, because what did that even mean? Everyone had many selves. No. The key to happiness is finding the lie that suits you best.
From How to Stop Time
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There are patterns to life . . . Rhythms. It is so easy, while trapped in just the one life, to imagine that times of sadness or tragedy or failure or fear are a result of that particular existence. That it is a by-product of living a certain way, rather than simply living. I mean, it would have made things a lot easier if we understood there was no way of living that can immunise you against sadness. And that sadness is intrinsically part of the fabric of happiness. You can’t have one without the other. Of course, they come in different degrees and quantities. But there is no life where you can be in a state of sheer happiness for ever. And imagining there is just breeds more unhappiness in the life you’re in.
From The Midnight Library
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We are all connected in so many seen and unseen ways. Which possibly explains why one of the simplest and quickest routes to happiness seems to be to make someone else happy. The reason to be selfless is selfish. Nothing makes ourselves feel better than not thinking of our selves.
From The Comfort Book
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Uncertainty is the cause of anxiety, but also a solution. While everything is uncertain, everything is hope. Everything is ambiguous. Everything is possible. We exist on a spinning coin. We cannot predict how it will land but we can enjoy the shine as it spins.
From The Comfort Book
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The game is never over until it is over. It isn't over if there is a single pawn left on the board. If one side is down to a pawn and a king, and the other side has every player, there is still a game.
From The Midnight Library
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Of course, we can't visit every place or meet every person or do every job, yet most of what we'd feel in any life is still available. We don't have to play every game to know what winning feels like. We don't have to hear every piece of music in the world to understand music. We don't have to have tried every variety of grape from every vineyard to know the pleasure of wine. Love and laughter and fear and pain are universal currencies. We just have to close our eyes and savour the taste of the drink in front of us and listen to the song as it plays. We are as completely and utterly alive as we are in any other life and have access to the same emotional spectrum.
From The Midnight Library
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It is quite a revelation to discover that the place you wanted to escape to is the exact same place you escaped from. That the prison wasn't the place, but the perspective.
From The Midnight Library
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The key to happiness - or that even more desired thing, calmness - lies not in always thinking happy thoughts. No. That is impossible. No mind on earth with any kind of intelligence could spend a lifetime enjoying only happy thoughts. They key is in accepting your thoughts, all of them, even the bad ones. Accept thoughts, but don't become them.
Understand, for instance, that having a sad thought, even having a continual succession of sad thoughts, is not the same as being a sad person.
From Reasons to Stay Alive
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You see, doing one thing differently is very often the same as doing everything differently.
From The Midnight Library
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To lose someone you love is the very worst thing in the world. It creates an invisible hole that you feel you are falling down and will never end. People you love make the world real and solid and when they suddenly go away forever, nothing feels solid any more.
From A Boy Called Christmas
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This is the whole stupid thing about all these unblood relationships. They depend on people staying the same, standing in the same spot they were in over a decade ago, when they first met. Surely the reality is that connections between people aren't permanent, but fleeting and random, like a solar eclipse or clouds meeting in the sky. They exist in a constantly moving universe full of constantly moving objects.
From The Radleys
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Now, consider this.

　　A human life is on average 80 Earth years or around 30,000 Earth days. Which means they are born, they make some friends, eat a few meals, they get married, or they don’t get married, have a child or two, or not, drink a few thousand glasses of wine, have sexual intercourse a few times, discover a lump somewhere, feel a bit of regret, wonder where all the time went, know they should have done it differently, realise they would have done it the same, and then they die. Into the great black nothing. Out of space. Out of time. The most trivial of trivial zeroes. And that’s it, the full caboodle. All confined to the same mediocre planet.
From The Humans
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If you aim to be something you are not, you will always fail. Aim to be you. Aim to look and act and think like you. Aim to be the truest version of you. Embrace that you-ness. Endorse it. Love it. Work hard at it. And don't give a second thought when people mock it or ridicule it. Most gossip is envy in disguise.
From The Midnight Library
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We only need to be one person.
We only need to feel one existence.
We don't have to do everything in order to be everything, because we are already infinite. While we are alive we always contain a future of multifarious possibility.
From The Midnight Library
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Perhaps a wish was just a hope with better aim.
From A Boy Called Christmas
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No single feeling becomes the only feeling if you let it all happen. And the way to let it all happen is to see the value in it all, in everything. To see the way the dark might lead to the light and the way present pain might lead to future hope.
From The Comfort Book
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You have survived everything you have been through, and you will survive this too. Stay for the person you will become. You are more than a bad day, or week, or month, or year, or even a decade. You are a future of multifarious possibility. You are another self at a point in future time looking back in gratitude that this lost and former you held on. Stay.
From The Comfort Book
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Maybe that's what all lives were, though. Maybe even the most seemingly perfectly intense or worthwhile lives ultimately felt the same. Acres of disappointment and monotony and hurts and rivalries but with flashes of wonder and beauty. Maybe that was the only meaning that mattered. To be the world, witnessing itself.
From The Midnight Library
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
And, just as it only takes a moment to die, it only takes a moment to live. You just close your eyes and let every futile fear slip away. And then, in this new state, free from fear, you ask yourself: who am I? If I could live without doubt what would I do? If I could be kind without the fear of being fucked over? If I could love without fear of being hurt? If I could taste the sweetness of today without thinking of how I will miss that taste tomorrow? If I could not fear the passing of time and the people it will steal? Yes. What would I do? Who would I care for? What battle would I fight? Which paths would I step down? What joys would I allow myself? What internal mysteries would I solve? How, in short, would I live?
From How to Stop Time
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Nothing is stronger than a small hope that doesn't give up. Nothing is stronger than a small hope that doesn't give up. Nothing is stronger than a small hope that doesn't give up. Nothing is stronger than a small hope that doesn't give up.
From The Comfort Book
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There is no standard normal. Normal is subjective. There are seven billion versions of normal on this planet.
From Reasons to Stay Alive
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Maybe Shakespeare was right. Maybe all the world was a stage. Maybe without the act everything would fall apart. The key to happiness wasn't being yourself, because what did that even mean? Everyone had many selves. No. The key to happiness is finding the lie that suits you best.
From How to Stop Time
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There are patterns to life . . . Rhythms. It is so easy, while trapped in just the one life, to imagine that times of sadness or tragedy or failure or fear are a result of that particular existence. That it is a by-product of living a certain way, rather than simply living. I mean, it would have made things a lot easier if we understood there was no way of living that can immunise you against sadness. And that sadness is intrinsically part of the fabric of happiness. You can’t have one without the other. Of course, they come in different degrees and quantities. But there is no life where you can be in a state of sheer happiness for ever. And imagining there is just breeds more unhappiness in the life you’re in.
From The Midnight Library
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
We are all connected in so many seen and unseen ways. Which possibly explains why one of the simplest and quickest routes to happiness seems to be to make someone else happy. The reason to be selfless is selfish. Nothing makes ourselves feel better than not thinking of our selves.
From The Comfort Book
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Uncertainty is the cause of anxiety, but also a solution. While everything is uncertain, everything is hope. Everything is ambiguous. Everything is possible. We exist on a spinning coin. We cannot predict how it will land but we can enjoy the shine as it spins.
From The Comfort Book
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The game is never over until it is over. It isn't over if there is a single pawn left on the board. If one side is down to a pawn and a king, and the other side has every player, there is still a game.
From The Midnight Library
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Of course, we can't visit every place or meet every person or do every job, yet most of what we'd feel in any life is still available. We don't have to play every game to know what winning feels like. We don't have to hear every piece of music in the world to understand music. We don't have to have tried every variety of grape from every vineyard to know the pleasure of wine. Love and laughter and fear and pain are universal currencies. We just have to close our eyes and savour the taste of the drink in front of us and listen to the song as it plays. We are as completely and utterly alive as we are in any other life and have access to the same emotional spectrum.
From The Midnight Library
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It is quite a revelation to discover that the place you wanted to escape to is the exact same place you escaped from. That the prison wasn't the place, but the perspective.
From The Midnight Library
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The key to happiness - or that even more desired thing, calmness - lies not in always thinking happy thoughts. No. That is impossible. No mind on earth with any kind of intelligence could spend a lifetime enjoying only happy thoughts. They key is in accepting your thoughts, all of them, even the bad ones. Accept thoughts, but don't become them.
Understand, for instance, that having a sad thought, even having a continual succession of sad thoughts, is not the same as being a sad person.
From Reasons to Stay Alive
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You see, doing one thing differently is very often the same as doing everything differently.
From The Midnight Library
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
To lose someone you love is the very worst thing in the world. It creates an invisible hole that you feel you are falling down and will never end. People you love make the world real and solid and when they suddenly go away forever, nothing feels solid any more.
From A Boy Called Christmas
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
This is the whole stupid thing about all these unblood relationships. They depend on people staying the same, standing in the same spot they were in over a decade ago, when they first met. Surely the reality is that connections between people aren't permanent, but fleeting and random, like a solar eclipse or clouds meeting in the sky. They exist in a constantly moving universe full of constantly moving objects.
From The Radleys
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Now, consider this.

　　A human life is on average 80 Earth years or around 30,000 Earth days. Which means they are born, they make some friends, eat a few meals, they get married, or they don’t get married, have a child or two, or not, drink a few thousand glasses of wine, have sexual intercourse a few times, discover a lump somewhere, feel a bit of regret, wonder where all the time went, know they should have done it differently, realise they would have done it the same, and then they die. Into the great black nothing. Out of space. Out of time. The most trivial of trivial zeroes. And that’s it, the full caboodle. All confined to the same mediocre planet.
From The Humans
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If you aim to be something you are not, you will always fail. Aim to be you. Aim to look and act and think like you. Aim to be the truest version of you. Embrace that you-ness. Endorse it. Love it. Work hard at it. And don't give a second thought when people mock it or ridicule it. Most gossip is envy in disguise.
From The Midnight Library
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
We only need to be one person.
We only need to feel one existence.
We don't have to do everything in order to be everything, because we are already infinite. While we are alive we always contain a future of multifarious possibility.
From The Midnight Library
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Perhaps a wish was just a hope with better aim.
From A Boy Called Christmas
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
No single feeling becomes the only feeling if you let it all happen. And the way to let it all happen is to see the value in it all, in everything. To see the way the dark might lead to the light and the way present pain might lead to future hope.
From The Comfort Book
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You have survived everything you have been through, and you will survive this too. Stay for the person you will become. You are more than a bad day, or week, or month, or year, or even a decade. You are a future of multifarious possibility. You are another self at a point in future time looking back in gratitude that this lost and former you held on. Stay.
From The Comfort Book
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Maybe that's what all lives were, though. Maybe even the most seemingly perfectly intense or worthwhile lives ultimately felt the same. Acres of disappointment and monotony and hurts and rivalries but with flashes of wonder and beauty. Maybe that was the only meaning that mattered. To be the world, witnessing itself.
From The Midnight Library
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
And, just as it only takes a moment to die, it only takes a moment to live. You just close your eyes and let every futile fear slip away. And then, in this new state, free from fear, you ask yourself: who am I? If I could live without doubt what would I do? If I could be kind without the fear of being fucked over? If I could love without fear of being hurt? If I could taste the sweetness of today without thinking of how I will miss that taste tomorrow? If I could not fear the passing of time and the people it will steal? Yes. What would I do? Who would I care for? What battle would I fight? Which paths would I step down? What joys would I allow myself? What internal mysteries would I solve? How, in short, would I live?
From How to Stop Time
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Nothing is stronger than a small hope that doesn't give up. Nothing is stronger than a small hope that doesn't give up. Nothing is stronger than a small hope that doesn't give up. Nothing is stronger than a small hope that doesn't give up.
From The Comfort Book
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There is no standard normal. Normal is subjective. There are seven billion versions of normal on this planet.
From Reasons to Stay Alive
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Maybe Shakespeare was right. Maybe all the world was a stage. Maybe without the act everything would fall apart. The key to happiness wasn't being yourself, because what did that even mean? Everyone had many selves. No. The key to happiness is finding the lie that suits you best.
From How to Stop Time
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There are patterns to life . . . Rhythms. It is so easy, while trapped in just the one life, to imagine that times of sadness or tragedy or failure or fear are a result of that particular existence. That it is a by-product of living a certain way, rather than simply living. I mean, it would have made things a lot easier if we understood there was no way of living that can immunise you against sadness. And that sadness is intrinsically part of the fabric of happiness. You can’t have one without the other. Of course, they come in different degrees and quantities. But there is no life where you can be in a state of sheer happiness for ever. And imagining there is just breeds more unhappiness in the life you’re in.
From The Midnight Library
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
We are all connected in so many seen and unseen ways. Which possibly explains why one of the simplest and quickest routes to happiness seems to be to make someone else happy. The reason to be selfless is selfish. Nothing makes ourselves feel better than not thinking of our selves.
From The Comfort Book
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Uncertainty is the cause of anxiety, but also a solution. While everything is uncertain, everything is hope. Everything is ambiguous. Everything is possible. We exist on a spinning coin. We cannot predict how it will land but we can enjoy the shine as it spins.
From The Comfort Book
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The game is never over until it is over. It isn't over if there is a single pawn left on the board. If one side is down to a pawn and a king, and the other side has every player, there is still a game.
From The Midnight Library
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Of course, we can't visit every place or meet every person or do every job, yet most of what we'd feel in any life is still available. We don't have to play every game to know what winning feels like. We don't have to hear every piece of music in the world to understand music. We don't have to have tried every variety of grape from every vineyard to know the pleasure of wine. Love and laughter and fear and pain are universal currencies. We just have to close our eyes and savour the taste of the drink in front of us and listen to the song as it plays. We are as completely and utterly alive as we are in any other life and have access to the same emotional spectrum.
From The Midnight Library
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It is quite a revelation to discover that the place you wanted to escape to is the exact same place you escaped from. That the prison wasn't the place, but the perspective.
From The Midnight Library
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The key to happiness - or that even more desired thing, calmness - lies not in always thinking happy thoughts. No. That is impossible. No mind on earth with any kind of intelligence could spend a lifetime enjoying only happy thoughts. They key is in accepting your thoughts, all of them, even the bad ones. Accept thoughts, but don't become them.
Understand, for instance, that having a sad thought, even having a continual succession of sad thoughts, is not the same as being a sad person.
From Reasons to Stay Alive
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You see, doing one thing differently is very often the same as doing everything differently.
From The Midnight Library
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
To lose someone you love is the very worst thing in the world. It creates an invisible hole that you feel you are falling down and will never end. People you love make the world real and solid and when they suddenly go away forever, nothing feels solid any more.
From A Boy Called Christmas
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
This is the whole stupid thing about all these unblood relationships. They depend on people staying the same, standing in the same spot they were in over a decade ago, when they first met. Surely the reality is that connections between people aren't permanent, but fleeting and random, like a solar eclipse or clouds meeting in the sky. They exist in a constantly moving universe full of constantly moving objects.
From The Radleys
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Now, consider this.

　　A human life is on average 80 Earth years or around 30,000 Earth days. Which means they are born, they make some friends, eat a few meals, they get married, or they don’t get married, have a child or two, or not, drink a few thousand glasses of wine, have sexual intercourse a few times, discover a lump somewhere, feel a bit of regret, wonder where all the time went, know they should have done it differently, realise they would have done it the same, and then they die. Into the great black nothing. Out of space. Out of time. The most trivial of trivial zeroes. And that’s it, the full caboodle. All confined to the same mediocre planet.
From The Humans
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If you aim to be something you are not, you will always fail. Aim to be you. Aim to look and act and think like you. Aim to be the truest version of you. Embrace that you-ness. Endorse it. Love it. Work hard at it. And don't give a second thought when people mock it or ridicule it. Most gossip is envy in disguise.
From The Midnight Library
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
We only need to be one person.
We only need to feel one existence.
We don't have to do everything in order to be everything, because we are already infinite. While we are alive we always contain a future of multifarious possibility.
From The Midnight Library
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Perhaps a wish was just a hope with better aim.
From A Boy Called Christmas
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
No single feeling becomes the only feeling if you let it all happen. And the way to let it all happen is to see the value in it all, in everything. To see the way the dark might lead to the light and the way present pain might lead to future hope.
From The Comfort Book
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You have survived everything you have been through, and you will survive this too. Stay for the person you will become. You are more than a bad day, or week, or month, or year, or even a decade. You are a future of multifarious possibility. You are another self at a point in future time looking back in gratitude that this lost and former you held on. Stay.
From The Comfort Book
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Maybe that's what all lives were, though. Maybe even the most seemingly perfectly intense or worthwhile lives ultimately felt the same. Acres of disappointment and monotony and hurts and rivalries but with flashes of wonder and beauty. Maybe that was the only meaning that mattered. To be the world, witnessing itself.
From The Midnight Library
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
And, just as it only takes a moment to die, it only takes a moment to live. You just close your eyes and let every futile fear slip away. And then, in this new state, free from fear, you ask yourself: who am I? If I could live without doubt what would I do? If I could be kind without the fear of being fucked over? If I could love without fear of being hurt? If I could taste the sweetness of today without thinking of how I will miss that taste tomorrow? If I could not fear the passing of time and the people it will steal? Yes. What would I do? Who would I care for? What battle would I fight? Which paths would I step down? What joys would I allow myself? What internal mysteries would I solve? How, in short, would I live?
From How to Stop Time
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Nothing is stronger than a small hope that doesn't give up. Nothing is stronger than a small hope that doesn't give up. Nothing is stronger than a small hope that doesn't give up. Nothing is stronger than a small hope that doesn't give up.
From The Comfort Book
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There is no standard normal. Normal is subjective. There are seven billion versions of normal on this planet.
From Reasons to Stay Alive
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote