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" It would be lovely to live in a culture where calmness was the aim. "
Matt Haig
Aim
Where
Culture
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" It is very hard to explain to people who have never known serious depression or anxiety the sheer continuous intensity of it. There is no off switch. "
Matt Haig
Depression
People
Serious
" Boys don't cry. But they do. We do. I do. I weep all the time. "
Matt Haig
Time
Weep
Cry
" Parents can only do what they think is best, with the experience they have. The learning curve for every parent is that there's a limit to how much they can shield children from. "
Matt Haig
Children
Learning
Experience
" 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
Up
Want
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. "
Matt Haig
Boring
Money
Down
" I've always thought feminism had a lot to say about both genders, as it is hard to talk about one without the other. I think men and women alike would benefit from men having a more fluid idea of what being a man is. "
Matt Haig
Man
Think
Say
" 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
Admit
You
Keep
" If you can't give children optimism, then what are you doing? "
Matt Haig
Doing
You
Optimism
" 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. "
Matt Haig
Tools
Meaning
Life
" I'd love for mental illness to be seen in the way that other horrible illnesses are. When people get cancer, very few parents will say, 'Oh I feel so bad for giving you so much unhealthy food over the years.' "
Matt Haig
You
Food
Giving
" I have never felt oppressed by women or that feminism is a problem. I do think boys find it hard to like things seen as feminine. I want my son not to feel self-conscious he likes ballet and my daughter to carry on playing Han Solo; that's all. "
Matt Haig
Daughter
Women
Think
" You don't need the world to understand you. It's fine. Some people will never really understand things they haven't experienced. Some will. Be grateful. "
Matt Haig
Grateful
People
Need
" 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
Think
Imagine
Choose
" Neuroscience is a baby science, a mere century old, and our scientific understanding of the brain is nowhere near where we'd like it to be. We know more about the moons of Jupiter than what is inside of our skulls. "
Matt Haig
Science
Old
Understanding
" 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. "
Matt Haig
Luxury
Think
Depression
" 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. "
Matt Haig
Talk
Difficult
Mental Illness
" People, certainly in the U.K., look down on screenwriting as an art form, but I love the discipline of it. Next to the bagginess of novel writing, it almost feels like a martial art. "
Matt Haig
Love
Discipline
Art
" 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
Me
My Life
Living
" Creative writing lessons can be very useful, just like music lessons can be useful. To say, as Hanif Kureishi did, that 99.9% of students are talentless is cruel and wrong. I believe that certain writers like to believe they arrived into the world with special, unteachable powers because it is good for the ego. "
Matt Haig
Creative
Good
Music
" I'm a firm believer in the connection between the body and the mind: feed one, feed both. I like to run, but only short distances, and fast. I'm no good at long distance. More than six miles, and the knees start to go. "
Matt Haig
Body
Run
Short
" If you are an atheist as I am, Shakespeare can be your ideal. Everything is within Shakespeare, especially in his 10 greatest plays. They have life, meaning, understanding, the whole lot. "
Matt Haig
Life
Meaning
Understanding
" 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
Happiness
You
Pain
" 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
You
Life
Curiosity
" Lots of children have had dark experiences, and if they're not having direct dark experiences, they are thinking about things and learning that life is fragile. You have to acknowledge that side of life to be able to then offer comfort and hope and goodwill. "
Matt Haig
Hope
Life
Thinking
" Robots are great. I am saying that now so that when a future civilization of robots takes us captive, they will search through the 'Guardian' web archive and realise I said, 'Robots are great,' and then they'll choose to save me. "
Matt Haig
Saying
Me
I Am
" 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. "
Matt Haig
Pure
Words
Culture
" 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
Fear
Nature
Sex
" 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
Look
Test
Clever
" 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. "
Matt Haig
Dark
Think
Stand
" 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
You
Cloud
Say