I think Father Christmas is real because the belief is real. The belief becomes the reality. – Matt Haig
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. – Matt Haig
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. – Matt Haig
I want life. I want to feel it and live it. I want, for as much of the time as possible in this blink-of-an-eye existence we have, to feel all that can be felt. – Matt Haig
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. – Matt Haig
How clear can I put this? I am not denying female oppression; I am trying to stop it by calling for a more fluid masculinity. – Matt Haig
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. – Matt Haig
However much in the foreground depression feels, you are separate to it. This is going to sound cheesy, but I’d say you are the sky. A cloud comes and dominates the sky. But the sky is still the sky. Depression tells you everything is going to get worse, but that’s a symptom. Don’t give depression power – constantly discredit it. – Matt Haig
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. – Matt Haig
The implication that depressed people are fundamentally irresponsible is a deeply damaging and counterproductive one. Winston Churchill was a depressive. He didn’t just fly planes; he was in charge of the Royal Air Force. – Matt Haig
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. – Matt Haig
Depression, for me, wasn’t a dulling but a sharpening, an intensifying, as though I had been living my life in a shell, and now the shell wasn’t there. It was total exposure. – Matt Haig
Beware of the gap: the gap between where you are and where you want to be. Simply thinking of the gap widens it, and you end up falling through. – Matt Haig
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. – Matt Haig
I think we get too hung up on categories. Obviously, the book market has to categorise things, and it makes it easier for a reader to go into a bookshop and choose, but as a writer, it helps to get rid of all of that and imagine you are a storyteller around a campfire. – Matt Haig
Depression is a horrible, potentially life-threatening illness – but the lives it threatens are almost always those of the people who suffer from it. – Matt Haig
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. – Matt Haig
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. – Matt Haig
In an age of never-ending health fads, it’s comforting to learn that one of the healthiest activities you can do has existed for millennia. It’s called reading. Yes, books are not just entertaining or educational: they can also improve your mental health. – Matt Haig
It took me at least all my 20s and some of my 30s to get the confidence to realise I could just write about what I wanted to write about without having to pass a test or look super clever. – Matt Haig