Matt Haig
@matthaig1
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Dad. Married to Andrea. Novelist. Failed dog trainer. Bad DJ. Trying to improve my Spanish. Work in progress. Still alive.
pale blue dot
Joined April 2009
I went away for a few years and wrote a novel. It is called The Life Impossible. It is my big life-and-love-and-the-universe novel. It will be out next August in the U.K. and early September in the US, Canada and elsewhere. It can be pre-ordered here -
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Anyone abusing Rashford and Sancho and Saka is a national disgrace.
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21 years ago this summer I nearly died by suicide because I knew I’d never be happy again. Today I put away the dishes then stood in the garden and let summer rain soak me to my skin. I felt so alive and quietly euphoric I wanted to reach back through time to tell me I was wrong.
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I am tired. I drank some wine. I have eaten too much chocolate. Everyone is asleep. But I just heard The Midnight Library has now sold over a million copies worldwide and I wanted to tell someone. I am so grateful people seem to like this book. Happy bunny day.
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You don’t have to be Facebook friends with people who made you feel terrible at school. You are fortyfuckingfive.
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You would have over half the team deported you prat.
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I have found this magical land. I think it is called ‘Scotland’.
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Left around 30 copies of the Midnight Library around Brighton today. Was fun.
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There is no better role model for young people than someone who places their mental health above public expectation.
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Journalist asked why I still have bouts of depression if I have a lovely family and a career going well. This is not how illness works.
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Just popping by to tell all the people who say that Meghan Markle was lying about being suicidal that you are an absolute disgrace. And you also know nothing at all.
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We have no control over who people think we are. So don’t worry. If they want to hate a fictional version of you that lives in their mind, let them. Don’t drain yourself trying to be understood by people who insist on not understanding you. Keep your cup full. Go to the kindness.
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Bit bored today so on the dog walk I stopped by various park benches all over Brighton and left some signed copies of The Midnight Library for anyone who fancies a book.
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Yesterday it was August. Three days ago it was July. Tomorrow it is October. This is how time works now.
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Finished writing a new novel. My first since The Midnight Library. I'd given up writing. But then I got into it again to keep sane. This is also my first tweet in nearly two years. The book is definitely better than this tweet. Cheers.
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Anxiety is weird. It's all intense suspense, no action. It's like Jaws without the shark.
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I never understand why 'easy reading' is sometimes used as an insult. It is quite hard to write a novel that is easy to read. Imagine criticising an architect because a house was easy to live in.
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When you nearly die young, ageing isn’t depressing. Every new year is a triumph. Every new age a victory. I am six minutes into 46. But I was born again at 25. Left the old me behind. So really this is 21. And it feels GOOD. Grateful for every borrowed day.
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If I ever write another self-help book it will be called Sometimes It Is Okay To Tell People To Fuck Off.
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22 years ago today I nearly died by suicide in Spain. Ever since, this has always been a bad time of year for me. Some hidden danger lurks in Septembers. But I remain here and standing and today the sun shines and the sea glistens and life feels a still, light, precious diamond.
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Some English football fans make it so hard to be an English football fan.
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Not all of us want to get back to all the ‘normal’ things. Because some of them made us feel abnormal. And some of them made us ill.
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Think of how the media treats women who speak about their mental health. From Naomi Osaka to Meghan Markle, from Princess Diana to Amy Winehouse, from reality TV stars to royalty. The women change, the will to humiliate doesn’t. It is deeply rotten, outdated and needing change.
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I am generally anti-meme on aesthetic principles but sometimes you have to.
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It’s my birthday! I am alive! I love birthdays! Happy birthday to Tom Cruise and happy birthday to me!.
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Very excited publisher telling me The Midnight Library is number one in the U.K. and - first for me - Ireland, number 2 in Canada, 3 in America and 5 in Germany. Absolutely none of this feels real. I want to hide under the sofa and shout from the rooftops at the same time. 🎺🎺🎺.
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Teachers have been on the frontline throughout this pandemic. Going far beyond the requirements of their job description for the greater good. Risking their own health in the process. And now the government has rewarded them by freezing their pay. Absolute disgrace.
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A very short and sentimental chapter from The Comfort Book. Something I tell myself at rock bottom.
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I sometimes get an overwhelming sense of how lucky I am to be here. 20 years ago I tried to die. Today I am sitting in my living room with my dog and my family. I'm just really damn thankful to that young person for staying around long enough to experience things beyond the pain.
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I sometimes struggle with the guilt of non-working even when I don’t have to work. Like my value is intrinsically tied to how long I spend staring at a laptop. It’s August ffs. I am going out in the sun. I wrote this for me and anyone who else who wants to hear it.
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Everyone of us who has felt pressured to use a physical excuse to get time off for a mental issue is very grateful this year for the precedents set by Simone Biles and Emma Raducanu and Naomi Osaka.
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Went for a walk in Ashdown Forest. Otherwise known as the original Hundred Acre Wood. Was life-affirming. Went there an Eeyore and came back a Tigger. Paradise.
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22 years ago I was so lost I literally couldn’t speak, I couldn’t eat without throwing up, and needed desperately to die. If you are in that place: please know you won’t always be. There are future imperfect versions of yourself that are not this one. And they need you to stay.
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Don't know about you but I would much rather live in a country that lost football games but had fewer yobs and racists and imbeciles.
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Lockdown posed massive mental health challenges. But our 'normal' world of long working hours, stressful commutes, overstretched lives, hectic crowds, shopping centres, pointless meetings, eco-destruction and 24/7 everything was hardly a mental health utopia. A new normal please.
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To anyone who is struggling with anxiety: a mere week ago I was in the middle of a really bad patch. Trapped in that self-referential spiral of worrying about worry. It tried to convince me it’d be for ever, as always. It passed. Fear lies. I hope you feel better soon.
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The great lesson of Naomi Osaka and Meghan Markle is that you don’t ever have to accept abuse or ill health as ‘part of the job’. You don’t have to succumb to the judgement of people who don’t understand you. You can live life on your own terms.
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The ludicrous debate about Naomi Osaka this week has been a real sign that some people still don’t see anxiety and depression as serious health issues.
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Jeez. The Simone Biles trolls. Mental health is a real part of health. It's not some airy imaginary part of it. It's not some mythical unicorn. Protecting mental health is a legitimate reason not to do something. As legitimate as any physical injury. Minds are quite important.
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I count progress in summers. 22 summers since my suicide attempt. Not free from depression. Not free from anxiety. Free from needing to die. Each year gives me strength, because it is another line I never thought I'd reach. The most impossible thing I ever did was somehow stay.
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I've written a new book. The Comfort Book. It's full of things which have helped me through hard times. Philosophy, books, quotes, thoughts, mantras, people. Things I write down to feel good and alive. I so LOVED writing this. Out July 1st. You can pre-order from today.
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This quote once helped save me. So I put it in The Comfort Book hoping it does the same for someone else.
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Being honest about what you feel is not weakness. Never let people tell you it is.
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News! A film of The Midnight Library is in the works. Very early days. But exciting days all the same.
Congratulations @matthaig1! We absolutely fell in love with this book and are so excited to be working on a big screen adaptation with Matt and @Blueprint_Pics! 🌃📚.
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I obviously can't say who they are. But in the last year I've tried to talk two relatively well known people out of taking their life. The reason for both their crises was the same: online abuse in newspaper comment sections and here. People don't see it as a health issue yet.
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A brand emailed and called me an influencer so I need to influence you to get a dog and a cactus and a vaccine.
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I can remember, distinctly, feeling the weight of depression and fear when I was 24 years old, absolutely KNOWING I wouldn't live to be 25. Knowing it would be impossible. Tomorrow is my 46th birthday. I am living in impossibility and it feels good. Trust the unknown.
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Genuinely confused by the amount of grief Waterstones is getting for simply saying what many other businesses are saying. That they encourage customers to wear masks. I genuinely feel people just want to be angry about things at the moment.
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I just went out on my bike to hide as many copies of The Comfort Book around Brighton as possible.
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Someone I loved died today. Brother-in-law’s mother-in-law. Don’t think there is a succinct name for that relation. But knew her for 25 years. A life force. She was a cackler. A great Doncaster lass. Never easy when someone who epitomised life, leaves it. The echo is so strong.
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Don’t absorb criticism from people you wouldn’t ask for advice.
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I have been apologising too much for being myself recently. No more of that. I am fine as I am. Also I have had some wine.
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Another chapter from The Comfort Book that took months of excruciating research.
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Never understand why people are so determined to say ‘she needs help’ as an insult. We all need help. Why stigmatise help?.
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‘Pro-life’ is such an arrogant term when it is so anti the rights of the living.
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The Midnight Library is set on the 28th April. That is because in this timeline today is our daughter’s birthday. She is twelve. She says hi!
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A few folk having a time of it slagging off pages I posted of a book literally called The Comfort Book as if they wanted it to be Dostoyevsky or something. Wrote a book full of simple, easy, (hopefully) comforting things. Don’t get your pants in a twist. You don’t have to buy it.
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The Britney story is an illustration of why so many people are still scared to be honest about their mental health situation. There are always people out there who could gaslight you or use it against you. The idea that mental illness gives away your right to be a full person.
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We have no control over who people think we are. So don’t worry. If they want to hate a fictional version of you that lives in their mind, let them. Don’t drain yourself trying to be understood by people who insist on not understanding you. Keep your cup full. Inhabit kindness.
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Every time a journalist implies someone has a panic attack because they are weak they stigmatise every person who has panic attacks. I had panic disorder for a year. Every time I want to be strong I think of the courage I had during that time. So much misunderstanding out there.
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My nephew Harvey has had a tough year. He caught Covid. He has had a lot of changes. He lost two beloved grandparents in a short space of time. But music has been his salvation and today he found out he got a FIRST in Music Production from Leeds. Such a proud uncle right now.
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It is so lovely to realise there will very probably be other people in your life that you will love and that you haven’t met them yet.
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Massive gratitude to the doctors, nurses, care workers, scientists and all who have actually been saving lives through this crisis. Rather than to the politicians who take credit for it.
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You can tell a lot about someone from how they handle defeat. Reckon it is a better judge of character than victory.
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If losing a final causes you to be racist or violent the problem has nothing to do with football and you really need to analyse it and address it for the sake of society.
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Panic attacks are awful. Easy to imagine you know what they are until you have one. They are like a disintegration. An intense sense of slipping away from your mind. The idea of judging other people for having something so awful is just gross.
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In Ibiza, where I nearly took my life 24 years ago. I’d gone to the island to escape and had only trapped myself further. Drink, drugs, depression. Andrea has stayed with me through the fall and rise and chaos between. Returning I see a different place with different eyes. Home.
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People ARE still here. Superb. Hello! I have changed a lot since I last saw you. I have a golden retriever called Bruce. I'm now sober. Had a load of really good therapy. Wrote a new novel. And I have switched from peanut to almond butter. How are you?.
Is anyone still here?.
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Frantic meeting at the Daily Mail right now as staffers try to decipher a way they can say Meghan naming her baby after the Queen means she secretly hates the Queen.
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The Green Party have as many seats as Reform so let's hope they get the same coverage as Farage going forward.
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Wouldn't it be good if politicians were in charge of things they knew about rather than just given random positions based on where the prime minister thinks they will be politically useful?.
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Killing more innocent people to avenge the killing of innocent people is the stupidest thing humans do. And we do a lot of stupid things.
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BBC News tonight reported on the wildfires without mentioning climate change. Like reporting on a bomb and not mentioning terrorism.
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On this day in 1999 I came off diazepam and had a hallucinatory panic attack in a shopping centre in Newcastle. Cried amid strangers. I had less than a week to live. Memories fall. The leaves feed future soil. Just walked the dog here in the future. The sun is shining. Life won.
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Be good if my dad actually looked older than me but here we are.
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Daughter finally has hamster she has campaigned for. He is in the building. Camera shy. She has named him Alexander Hamsterton, as planned.
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I have a new book out at midnight. It is called The Comfort Book. A book of comforting thoughts. I hope you enjoy it.
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In the 1960s humans going to space felt like a collective endeavour. Something that advanced the whole of humankind. Billionaires going to space in 2021 just feels like first class passengers on the Titanic hogging the lifeboats.
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