“Humans, as a rule, don't like mad people unless they are good at painting, and only then once they are dead. But the definition of mad, on Earth, seems to be very unclear and inconsistent. What is perfectly sane in one era turns out to be insane in another. The earliest humans walked around naked with no problem. Certain humans, in humid rainforests mainly, still do so. So, we must conclude that madness is sometimes a question of time, and sometimes of postcode.
Basically, the key rule is, if you want to appear sane on Earth you have to be in the right place, wearing the right clothes, saying the right things, and only stepping on the right kind of grass.”
― Matt Haig, quote from The Humans
“Make sure, as often as possible, you are doing something you’d be happy to die doing.”
― Matt Haig, quote from The Humans
“No one will understand you. It is not, ultimately, that important. What is important is that you understand you.”
― Matt Haig, quote from The Humans
“Advice for a human.
81. You can't find happiness looking for the meaning of life. Meaning is only the third most important thing. It comes after loving and being.
82. If you think something is ugly, look harder. Ugliness is just a failure of seeing.”
― Matt Haig, quote from The Humans
“A paradox: The things you don’t need to live—books, art, cinema, wine, and so on—are the things you need to live.”
― Matt Haig, quote from The Humans
“If getting drunk was how people forgot they were mortal, then hangovers were how they remembered.”
― Matt Haig, quote from The Humans
“This was, I would later realise, a planet of things wrapped inside things. Food inside wrappers. Bodies inside clothes. Contempt inside smiles. Everything was hidden away.”
― Matt Haig, quote from The Humans
“So love is about finding the right person to hurt you?”
“Pretty much.”
― Matt Haig, quote from The Humans
“Knowledge is finite. Wonder is infinite.”
― Matt Haig, quote from The Humans
“Let's not forget The Things They Do To Make Themselves Happy That Actually Make Them Miserable. This is an infinite list. It includes - shopping, watching TV, taking the better job, getting the bigger house, writing a semi-autobiographical novel, educating their young, making their skin look mildly less old and harboring a vague desire to believe there might be a meaning to it all.”
― Matt Haig, quote from The Humans
“If you think something is ugly, look harder. Ugliness is just a failure of seeing.”
― Matt Haig, quote from The Humans
“Advice for a human
86. To like something is to insult it. Love it or hate it. Be passionate. As civilisation advances, so does indifference. It is a disease. Immunize yourself with art. And love.”
― Matt Haig, quote from The Humans
“Advice for a human.
90. But know this. Men are not from Mars. Women are not from Venus. Do not fall for categories. Everyone is everything. Every ingredient inside a star is inside you, and every personality that ever existed competes in the theatre of your mind for the main role.
91. You are lucky to be alive. Inhale and take in life's wonders. Never take so much as a single petal of a flower for granted.”
― Matt Haig, quote from The Humans
“Advice for a human.
87. Dark matter is needed to hold galaxies together. Your mind is a Galaxy. More dark than light. But the light makes it worthwhile.
88. Which is to say: don't kill yourself. 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.”
― Matt Haig, quote from The Humans
“The single biggest act of bravery or madness anyone can do is the act of change.”
― Matt Haig, quote from The Humans
“There is only one genre in fiction, the genre is called book.”
― Matt Haig, quote from The Humans
“Laughter, along with madness, seemed to be the only way out, the emergency exit for humans.”
― Matt Haig, quote from The Humans
“Don’t aim for perfection. Evolution, and life, only happen through mistakes.”
― Matt Haig, quote from The Humans
“Everyone is a comedy. If people are laughing at you, they just don't quite understand the joke that is themselves.”
― Matt Haig, quote from The Humans
“And I knew the point of love right then.
The point of love was to help you survive.
The point was also to forget meaning. To stop looking and start living. The meaning was to hold the hand of someone you cared about and to live inside the present. Past and future were myths. The past was just the present that had died and the future would never exist anyway, because by the time we got to it the future would have turned into the present. The present was all there was.”
― Matt Haig, quote from The Humans
“It was, of course, another test. Everything in human life was a test. That was why they all looked so stressed out.”
― Matt Haig, quote from The Humans
“Maybe that is what beauty was, for humans. Accidents, imperfections, placed inside a pretty pattern. Asymmetry. The defiance of mathematics.”
― Matt Haig, quote from The Humans
“That was the price of human civilization - to create it, they had to close down the door to their true selves. And so they are lost, that is how I understand it. And that is why they invented art: books, music, films, plays, painting, sculpture. They invented them as bridges back to themselves, back to who they are. But however close they get, they are forever removed”
― Matt Haig, quote from The Humans
“To be a human is to state the obvious. Repeatedly. Over and over, until the end of time.”
― Matt Haig, quote from The Humans
“You don’t have to be an academic. You don’t have to be anything. Don’t force it. Feel your way, and don’t stop feeling your way until something fits. Maybe nothing will. Maybe you are a road, not a destination. That is fine. Be a road. But make sure it’s one with something to look at out of the window.”
― Matt Haig, quote from The Humans
“Beauty breeds beauty, truth triggers truth. The cure for writer's block is therefore to read.”
― Matt Haig, quote from The Humans
“The possibility of pain is where love stems from”
― Matt Haig, quote from The Humans
“To experience beauty on Earth, you needed to experience pain and to know mortality. That is why so much that is beautiful on this planet has to do with time passing and the Earth turning. Which might also explain why to look at such natural beauty was to also feel sadness and a craving for a life unlived.”
― Matt Haig, quote from The Humans
“Human life, I realized, got progressively worse as you got older, by the sound of things. You arrived, with baby feet and hands and infinite happiness, and then the happiness slowly evaporated as your feet and hands grew bigger. And then, from the teenage years onward, happiness was something you could lose your grip of, and once it started to slip, it gained mass. It was as if the knowledge that it could slip was the thing that made it more difficult to hold, no matter how big your feet and hands were.”
― Matt Haig, quote from The Humans
“Humans, I was discovering, believed they were in control of their own lives, and so they were in awe of questions and tests, as these made them feel like they had a certain mastery over other people, who had failed in their choices, and who had not worked hard enough on the right answers.”
― Matt Haig, quote from The Humans
Matt Haig
Born place: in Sheffield, The United Kingdom
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“There were several recently dug graves in the churchyard, but I found only one that was freshly dug and covered with fresh flowers. I had known Anna only from a few laughing words, from the light in her eyes, a touch of hands and a fleeting kiss, but I felt an ache inside me such as I had not felt since I was a child, since my father’s death. I looked up at the church steeple, a dark arrow pointing at the moon and beyond, and tried with all my heart and mind to believe she was up there somewhere in that vast expanse of infinity, up there in Sunday-school Heaven, in Big Joe’s happy Heaven. I couldn’t bring myself to think it. I knew she was lying in the cold earth at my feet. I knelt down and kissed the earth, then left her there. The moon sailed above me, following behind me, through the trees, lighting my way back to camp. By the time I got there I had no more tears left to cry. The”
― Michael Morpurgo, quote from Private Peaceful
“This ain't going to be no goddamn Sunday school picnic.”
― Kent Haruf, quote from Plainsong
“I would that I could have stopped time and preserved that day forever. It was a perfect day. There was the shadow of sorrow, yes. It would always be there. But that was the nature of life. The bright mirror and the dark, reflecting one another. And today there was so much brightness.”
― Jacqueline Carey, quote from Kushiel's Mercy
“Karsa reached down, gathered the skeletal figure into his arms, and then settled back. ‘I stepped over corpses on the way here,’ the Toblakai said. ‘People no one cared about, dying alone. In my barbaric village this would never happen, but here in this city, this civilized jewel, it happens all the time. (...) What is your name?’
‘Munug.’
‘Munug. This night – before I must rise and walk into the temple – I am a village. And you are here, in my arms. You will not die uncared for.’
‘You – you would do this for me? A stranger?’
‘In my village no one is a stranger – and this is what civilization has turned its back on. One day, Munug, I will make a world of villages, and the age of cities will be over. And slavery will be dead, and there shall be no chains – tell your god. Tonight, I am his knight.’
Munug’s shivering was fading. The old man smiled. ‘He knows.’
It wasn’t too much, to take a frail figure into one’s arms for those last moments of life. Better than a cot, or even a bed in a room filled with loved ones. Better, too, than an empty street in the cold rain. To die in someone’s arms – could there be anything more forgiving?
Every savage barbarian in the world knew the truth of this.”
― Steven Erikson, quote from The Crippled God
“Lord, remember me when You come into Your kingdom.” 43And Jesus said to him, “Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in †Paradise.”
― quote from Holy Bible: The New King James Version
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The Parafaith WarBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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