Reasons to Stay Alive is Matt Haig’s accessible and life-affirming memoir of his struggle with depression, and how his triumph over the illness taught him to live.
Matt Haig is the internationally bestselling writer of six novels, including the forthcoming How To Stop Time. He has also written award-winning children’s books. His work has been translated into thirty languages. Reasons to Stay Alive, a bestseller in the UK since its publication, is his first work of nonfiction.
Reasons to Stay Alive is a raw, personal memoir that is gut-wrenching yet inspirational at the same time. I related deeply his story so I highly recommend this book to anyone who is currently going through depression or dealing with friends and family who have depression.
Reasons to Stay Alive provides an emotional account of just how life-altering depression can be, and gives a unique perspective on how Matt Haig coped with it. The book is sprinkled with nuggets of wisdom and heartfelt quotes that are sure to make this a modern classic. Here is a selection of the top 50 quotes from Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig.
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50 Quotes from Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig
How to stop time: kiss. How to travel in time: read. How to escape time: music. How to feel time: write. How to release time: breathe.
Wherever you are, at any moment, try and find something beautiful. A face, a line out of a poem, the clouds out of a window, some graffiti, a wind farm. Beauty cleans the mind.
Maybe love is just about finding the person you can be your weird self with.
There is no standard normal. Normal is subjective. There are seven billion versions of normal on this planet.
To other people, it sometimes seems like nothing at all. You are walking around with your head on fire and no one can see the flames.
There is this idea that you either read to escape or you read to find yourself.
I am you and you are me. We are alone, but not alone. We are trapped by time, but also infinite. Made of flesh, but also stars.
If you are the type of person who thinks too much about stuff then there is nothing lonelier in the world than being surrounded by a load of people on a different wavelength.
Life is waiting for you. You might be stuck here for a while, but the world isn’t going anywhere. Hang on in there if you can. Life is always worth it.
The key is in accepting your thoughts, all of them, even the bad ones.
Depression is also smaller than you. Always, it is smaller than you, even when it feels vast.It operates within you, you do not operate within it. It may be a dark cloud passing across the sky but – if that is the metaphor – you are the sky. You were there before it. And the cloud can’t exist without the sky, but the sky can exist without the cloud.
You can be a depressive and be happy, just as you can be a sober alcoholic.
Three in the morning is never the time to try and sort out your life.
I want life. I want to read it and write it and 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.
Once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.
A society which demands we be normal even as it drives us insane.
An annoying thing about depression is that thinking about life is inevitable. Depression makes thinkers out of all of us.
Just when you feel you have no time to relax, know that this is the moment you most need to make time to relax.
There is this idea that you either read to escape or you read to find yourself. I don’t really see the difference. We find ourselves through the process of escaping.
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.
The price for being intelligent enough to be the first species to be fully aware of the cosmos might just be a capacity to feel a whole universe’s worth of darkness.
Adding anxiety to depression is a bit like adding cocaine to alcohol. It presses fast-forward on the whole experience.
Depression is not something you ‘admit to’, it is not something you have to blush about, it is a human experience.
The more you research the science of depression, the more you realise it is still more characterised by what we don’t know than what we do. It is 90 per cent mystery.
Only a fool or a liar will tell you how the brain works.
A brain is not a toaster. It is complex. It may only weigh a little over a kilo, but it is a kilo that contains a whole lifetime of memories.
When we are trying to get better, the only truth that matters is what works for us.
I was as obsessed with time as some people are about money. It was the only weapon I had.
Depression is an illness. Yet it doesn’t come with a rash or a cough. It is hard to see, as it is generally invisible.
Where talk exists, so does hope.
That’s the odd thing about depression and anxiety. It acts like an intense fear of happiness, even as you yourself consciously want that happiness more than anything.
Minds have their own weather systems. You are in a hurricane. Hurricanes run out of energy eventually. Hold on.
Nothing lasts for ever. This pain won’t last. The pain tells you it will last. Pain lies. Ignore it. Pain is a debt paid off with time.
Your mind is a galaxy. More dark than light. But the light makes it worthwhile.
Even when the darkness is total. Always know that life is not still. Time is space. You are moving through that galaxy. Wait for the stars.
You will one day experience joy that matches this pain.
You might be stuck here for a while, but the world isn’t going anywhere. Hang on in there if you can. Life is always worth it.
Everyone would have a label if they asked the right professional.
Pretty much every human could find a reason to hate themselves if they thought about it as much as you did.
Things aren’t going to get worse. There is only upwards from here.
Clouds with silver linings are still clouds.
People place so much value on thought, but feeling is as essential.
I am satisfied just to be.
I hate depression. I am scared of it. Terrified, in fact. But at the same time, it has made me who I am.
Love is an attitude to life. It can save us.
Anxiety takes away all the commas and full stops we need to make sense of ourselves.
To panic without a reason, that’s madness. To panic with a reason, that’s sanity.
It may be a dark cloud passing across the sky, but – if that is the metaphor – you are the sky.
Maybe love is just about finding the person you can be your weird self with.
We all matter because we are all alive.
