Matt Haig

“That kind of monotony that running generates - the one soundtracked by heavy breathing and the steady rhythm of feet on pavements - became a kind of metaphor for depression.”

“The first rule of marriage: solve the mystery, end the love.”

“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.”

“So love is about finding the right person to hurt you?”“Pretty much.”

“There aren't any fences to the imagination, and so there shouldn't be any for books.”

“What doesn't kill you very often makes you weaker. What doesn't kill you can leave you limping for the rest of your days. What doesn't kill you can make you scared to leave your house, or even your bedroom, and have you trembling, or mumbling incoherently, or leaning with your head on a window pane, wishing you could return to the time before the thing that didn't kill you.”

“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.”

“Beauty breeds beauty; truth triggers truth. The cure for writer's block is therefore to read.”

“I think maths is the root of everything. If we understood every area of math, it would lead to improving our sense of science, physics, engineering, space travel... all those great things. Maths is a backbone for it.”

“You have to be good. And keep getting better. For every writer taken on, another is dropped. A paradox: you have to rise to stay level.”

“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.”

“There is certainly no one 'type' of writer who deliberately draws on Shakespeare. In fact, there's a strong argument that everyone writing in the English language is influenced by Shakespeare because, to a considerable degree, he shaped that language.”

“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.”