A million people a year kill themselves. Between ten and twenty million people a year try to. Worldwide, men are over three times more likely to kill themselves than women.

— Matt Haig

And after that, after the awkward shuffling away of that last thin layer of clothes, words retreated to the sounds they once were. We had sex. A happy entanglement of warm limbs and warmer love. A physical and psychological merging that conjured a kind of inner light, a bio-emotional phosphorescence, that was overwhelming in its gorgeousness. I wondered why they weren’t prouder of it. Of this magic. I wondered why, if they had to have flags, why they didn’t just opt for one with a picture of sex.

— Matt Haig

And for three weeks I was trapped in my own mind again. But this time, I had weapons. One of them, maybe the most important, was this knowledge: I have been ill before, then well again. Wellness is possible.

— Matt Haig

And yet, I was scared of falling asleep, because the moment I fell asleep my wounds would heal and right then I didn’t want that to happen. Right then, I found a strange but real comfort in the pain.

— Matt Haig

Be proud to act like a normal human being. Keep daylight hours, get a regular job, and mix in the company of people with a fixed sense of right and wrong.

— Matt Haig

Blood doesn't satisfy cravings. It magnifies them.

— 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

But it only takes a doubt. A drop of ink falls into a clear glass of water and clouds the whole thing. So the moment after I realized I wasn't perfectly well was the moment I realized I was still very ill indeed.

— Matt Haig

Even more staggeringly, depression is a disease so bad that people are killing themselves because of it in a way they do not kill themselves with any other illness. Yet people still don’t really think depression really is that bad. If they did, they wouldn't say the things they say.

— Matt Haig

Everyone represses everything. Do you think any of these "normal" human beings really do exactly what they want to do all the time? 'Course not. It's just the same. We're middle-class and we're British. Repression is in our veins.

— Matt Haig