Matt Haig Best Quotes

Librarians have knowledge. They guide you to the right books. The right worlds. They find the best places. Like soul-enhanced search engines.

The key to happiness wasn't being yourself, because what did that even mean? Everyone had many selves. No. The key to happiness is finding the lie that suits you best.

The best thing about rock bottom is the rock part. You discover the solid bit of you. The bit that can't be broken down further. The thing that you might sentimentally call a soul. At our lowest we find the solid ground of our foundation. And we can build ourselves anew.

Nora had always had a problem accepting herself. From as far back as she could remember, she'd had the sense that she wasn't enough. Her parents who both had their own insecurities, had encouraged that idea. She imagined, now, what it would be like to accept herself completely. Every mistake she had ever made. Every mark on her body. Every dream she had ever made. Every mark on her body. Every dream she hadn't reached or pain she had felt. Every lust or longing she had suppressed. She imagined accepting it all. The way she accepted nature. The way she accepted a glacier or a puffin or the breach of a whale. She imagined seeing herself as just another brilliant freak of nature. Just another sentient animal, trying her best. And in doing so, she imagined what it was like to be free.

So, as was often the case, a big fear was beaten by a bigger fear. The best way to beat a monster is to find a scarier one.

Maybe Shakespeare was right. Maybe all the world was a stage. Maybe without the act everything would fall apart. The key to happiness wasn't being yourself, because what did that even mean? Everyone had many selves. No. The key to happiness is finding the lie that suits you best.

The sky isn’t more beautiful if you have perfect skin. Music doesn’t sound more interesting if you have a six-pack. Dogs aren’t better company if you’re famous. P izza tastes good regardless of your job title. The best of life exists beyond the things we are encouraged to crave.

Flowers, after love, must have been the best advert planet Earth had going for it.

She imagined, now, what it would be like to accept herself completely. Every mistake she had ever made. Every mark on her body. Every dream she hadn’t reached or pain she had felt. Every lust or longing she had suppressed. She imagined accepting it all. The way she accepted nature. The way she accepted a glacier or a puffin or the breach of a whale. She imagined seeing herself as just another brilliant freak of nature. Just another sentient animal, trying their best. And in doing so, she imagined what it was like to be free.

Don’t do the work people expect you to do. Do the work you want to do. You only get one life. It’s always best to live it as yourself.

The best way to think of the ageing process in relation to a human face is to imagine a map of an area of innocent land which slowly becomes a city with many long and winding routes.

Librarians have knowledge. They guide you to the right books. The right worlds. They find the best places. Like soul-enhanced search engines." "Exactly. But you also have to know what you like. What to type into the metaphorical search box. And sometimes you have to try a few things before that becomes clear.

I suppose, in the absence of universal certainties, we are our own best laboratory.

The best of life exists beyond the things we are encouraged to crave.

I feel the sheer unfathomable marvel that is this strange life we have, here on earth, the seven billion of us, clustered in our towns and cities on this pale blue dot of a planet, spending our allotted 30,000 days as best we can, in glorious insignificance.

The best thing about rock bottom is the rock part. You discover the solid bit of you. The bit that can’t be broken down further. The thing that you might sentimentally call a soul. At our lowest we find the solid ground of our foundation. And we can build ourselves anew.

An online profile of your best friend is not your best friend. A status update about a day in the park is not a day in the park. And the desire to tell the world about how happy you are is not how happy you are.

She imagined seeing herself as just another brilliant freak of nature. Just another sentient animal, trying their best. And in doing so, she imagined what it was like to be free.

A true friend is rare a true friend is the best a true friend is needed like east needs west.

A smile is the best kind of magic in the world

It’s a weird thing, depression. Even now, writing this with a good distance of fourteen years from my lowest point, I haven’t fully escaped. You get over it, but at the same time you never get over it. It comes back in flashes, when you are tired or anxious or have been eating the wrong stuff, and catches you off guard. I woke up with it a few days ago, in fact. I felt its dark wisps around my head, that ominous life-is-fear feeling. But then, after a morning with the best five- and six-year-olds in the world, it subsided. it is now an aside. Something to put brackets around. Life lesson: the way out is never through yourself.

Every time I read a great book I felt I was reading a kind of map, a treasure map, and the treasure I was being directed to was in actual fact myself. But each map was incomplete, and I would only locate the treasure if I read all the books, and so the process of finding my best self was an endless quest. And books themselves seemed to me to reflect this idea. Which is why the plot of every book ever can be boiled down to ‘someone is looking for something’.

Happy Christmas!' the man said. 'Yes', Charles Dickens said, who couldn't bring himself to say 'Happy Christmas' back. 'Isn't it the best of times?' the man went on. The cat gave a gentle miaow of disagreement in his arms as Charles Dickens nodded. 'Yes. And the worst.

A kind of timidity can set in with familiarity. A fear of change. We can end up stuck in jobs we don’t like, in unhealthy relationships, with similar unhelpful attitudes. We call this the “comfort zone” but often it is the opposite. A discomfort zone, a stagnation zone, an unfulfilled zone. It is surprisingly easy to walk through and out, once we decide to. And what we see beyond the discomfort zone is in fact a deeper comfort. The comfort of being the best possible version of us. Beyond the pattern or code of established behavior. Less coded, more human.

so we need quite quickly to learn how to be happy with not having society’s unrealistic version of the ‘best’ body, and a bit happier with having our body,

Don't do the work people expect you to do. Do the work you want to do. You only get one life. It's always best to live it as yourself.

If, as Schopenhauer said, “we forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people,” then love—at its best—is a way to reclaim those lost parts of ourselves. That freedom we lost somewhere quite early in childhood. Maybe love is just about finding the person you can be your weird self with.

Librarians have knowledge. They guide you to the right books. The right worlds. They find the best places. Like soul-enhanced search engines.’ ‘Exactly. But you also have to know what you like. What to type into the metaphorical search box. And sometimes you have to try a few things before that becomes clear.

Become you. Become the person no one else is. If people don’t like you, let them not like you. Not every fruit has to be an apple. It is too exhausting to spend this existence as someone else. If you are a pomegranate, be a pomegranate. Sure, there are probably more people who don’t like pomegranates than people who don’t like apples, but for those of us who like pomegranates they are what we like best.

It makes sense that shopping centers aren’t easy places to be in. A shopping center is a deliberately stimulating environment, designed not to calm or comfort, but merely to get us to spend money. And as anxiety is often a trigger for consumption, feeling calm and satisfied would probably work against the shopping center’s best interests. Calmness and satisfaction—in the agenda of the shopping center—are destinations we reach by purchasing. Not places already there.

Where we are from there is no remorse because action has a logical motive and always results in the best outcome for the given situation.

Een schilderij van een pijp is geen pij, zoals Magritte zei. Er is een permanente kloof tussen de voorstelling van een voorwerp en het voorwerp zelf. Een onlineprofiel van je beste vriend is je beste vriend niet. Een statusupdate over een dagje naar het park is dat dagje naar het park niet. En het verlangen de wereld te vertellen hoe gelukkig je bent is niet hoe gelukkig je bent.

De evolutionair psychologen zouden best eens gelijk kunnen hebben. Misschien zijn wij mensen inderdaad te ver doorgeëvolueerd en is de prijs die we betalen voor onze intelligentie, waardoor we de eerste soort zijn die zich volledig bewust is van de kosmos, het vermogen om een heel universum aan duisternis te voelen.

The sky isn’t more beautiful if you have perfect skin. Music doesn’t sound more interesting if you have a six-pack. Dogs aren’t better company if you’re famous. Pizza tastes good regardless of your job title. The best of life exists beyond the things we are encouraged to crave.

Maybe Shakespeare was right. Maybe all the world was a stage. Maybe without the act everything would fall apart. The key to happiness wasn’t being yourself, because what did that even mean? Everyone had many selves. No. The key to happiness is finding the lie that suits you best.

Librarians have knowledge. They guide you to the right books. The right worlds. They find the best places. Like soul-enhanced search engines.’ ‘Exactly.

The way she accepted a glacier or a puffin or the breach of a whale. She imagined seeing herself as just another brilliant freak of nature. Just another sentient animal, trying their best. And in doing so, she imagined what it was like to be free.

Flowers, after love, must have been the best advertisement planet Earth had going for it.

She imagined accepting it all. The way she accepted nature. The way she accepted a glacier or a puffin or the breach of a whale. She imagined seeing herself as just another brilliant freak of nature. Just another sentient animal, trying their best. And in doing so, she imagined what it was like to be free.

I am pro anything that works and I know pills do work for a lot of people. There may well come a time in the future where I take pills again. For now, I do what I know keeps me just about level. Exercise definitely helps me, as does yoga and absorbing myself in something or someone I love, so I keep doing these things. I suppose, in the absence of universal certainties, we are our own best laboratory.

but the truth is, not everyone will like us. Not everyone we meet will always want the best for us. And not everyone will know our truth. If people want to hate us, it’s easier to let them. You see, it is better to be disliked for being who you are than to be liked for who you are not. Being who you are not is exhausting.

A note on the future Our anxieties and insecurities, particularly it seems in the West, are shaped by our demand that the future be free from worry. But of course we can’t ever have such assurance. The future sits there with pen in hand, refusing to sign that particular contract. Alan Watts, a British philosopher heavily influenced by Eastern philosophy and spirituality, reminded us that the future is inherently unknown. “If . . . we cannot live happily without an assured future, we are certainly not adapted to living in a finite world where, despite the best plans, accidents will happen, and where death comes at the end.” So, in other words, if we demand the future be free from suffering in order to be happy, we can’t be happy. It is like demanding the sea be entirely still before we sail on it.

Do not compare the worst bits of your life with the best bits of other people’s.

In your root life Voltaire lived longer than almost any other life, except the one you’ve just encountered, where he died only three hours ago. Although he had a tough few early years, the year you had him was the best of his life.

Maybe everyone was pretending something. Maybe every teacher and pupil at this school was pretending something. Maybe Shakespeare was right. Maybe all the world was a stage. Maybe without the act everything would fall apart. The key to happiness wasn’t being yourself, because what did that even mean? Everyone had many selves. No. The key to happiness is finding the lie that suits you best.

A repetitive strain injury of the mind. How to exist in the 21st century and not have a panic attack Keep an eye on yourself. Be your own friend. Be your own parent. Be kind to yourself. Check on what you are doing. Do you need to watch the last episode of the series when it is after midnight? Do you need that third or fourth glass of wine? Is that really in your best interests? Declutter your mind. Panic is the product of overload. In an overloaded world we need to have a filter. We need to simplify things. We need to disconnect sometimes. We need to stop staring at our phones. To have moments of not thinking about work. A kind of mental feng shui. Listen to calm noise. Things that aren’t as stimulating as music. Waves, your own breath, a breeze through the leaves, the purr of a cat, and best of all: rain. Let it happen. If you feel panic rising the instinctive reaction is to panic some more. To panic about the panic. To metapanic. The trick is to try to feel panic without panicking about it. This is nearly—but not quite—impossible. I had panic disorder—a condition defined not by the occasional panic attack but by frequent panic attacks and the continuous hellish fear of the next one. By the time I’d had hundreds of panic attacks I began to tell myself I wanted it. I didn’t, obviously. But I used to work hard at trying to invite the panic—as a test, to see how I could cope. The more I invited it, the less it wanted to stay around. Accept feelings. And accept that they are just that: feelings. Don’t grab life by the throat. “Life should be touched, not strangled,” said the writer Ray Bradbury. It is okay to release fear. The fear tries to tell you it is necessary, and that it is protecting you. Try to accept it as a feeling, rather than valid information. Bradbury also said: “Learning to let go should be learned before learning to get.” Be aware of where you are. Are your surroundings overstimulating? Is there somewhere you can go that is calmer? Is there some nature you can look at? Look up. In city centers, the

How to exist in the 21st century and not have a panic attack Keep an eye on yourself. Be your own friend. Be your own parent. Be kind to yourself. Check on what you are doing. Do you need to watch the last episode of the series when it is after midnight? Do you need that third or fourth glass of wine? Is that really in your best interests? Declutter your mind. Panic is the product of overload. In an overloaded world we need to have a filter. We need to simplify things. We need to disconnect sometimes. We need to stop staring at our phones. To have moments of not thinking about work. A kind of mental feng shui. Listen to calm noise. Things that aren’t as stimulating as music. Waves, your own breath, a breeze through the leaves, the purr of a cat, and best of all: rain.

I looked up to the sky and opened my mouth a little and enjoyed the rain's mineral taste. I am trying to do this now. Let moments get the best of me...

I am trying to do this now. Let moments get the best of me.

He was probably visiting Ravi, Nora thought. Ravi was her brother’s best friend. While Joe had given up the guitar and moved to London, for a crap IT job he hated, Ravi had stuck to Bedford. He played in a covers band now, called Slaughterhouse Four, doing pub gigs around town.

Nora had always had a problem accepting herself. From as far back as she could remember, she'd had the sense that she wasn't enough. Her parents, who both had their own insecurities, had encouraged the idea. She imagined, now, what it would be like to accept herself completely. Every mistake she had ever made. Every mark on her body. Every dream she hadn't reached or pain she had felt. Every lust or longing she had suppressed. She imagined accepting it all. The way she accepted nature. The way she accepted a glacier or a puffin or the breach of a whale. She imagined seeing herself as just another brilliant freak of nature. Just another sentient animal, trying their best. And in doing so, she imagined what it was like to be free.

She imagined seeing herself as just another brilliant freak of nature. Just another sentient animal, trying their best. And in doing so, she imagined what it was like to be free. Life and Death and the Quantum Wave Function With Hugo, it wasn’t a library.

Every life she had tried so far since entering the library had really been someone else’s dream. The married life in the pub had been Dan’s dream. The trip to Australia had been Izzy’s dream, and her regret about not going had been a guilt for her best friend more than a sorrow for herself. The dream of her becoming a swimming champion belonged to her father. And okay, so it was true that she had been interested in the Arctic and being a glaciologist when she was younger, but that had been steered quite significantly by her chats with Mrs Elm herself, back in the school library. And The Labyrinths, well, that had always been her brother’s dream.

On our unnamed alien hero’s home world, Vonnadoria, mathematics has transformed his people, giving them the ability to create a utopian society where knowledge is limitless and immortality attainable. But when Cambridge professor Andrew Martin cracks the Riemann hypothesis, opening a door to the same technology that the alien’s planet possesses, the narrator is sent to Earth to erase all evidence of the solution and kill anyone who had seen the proof. He struggles to pass undetected long enough to gain access to Martin’s research. But as he takes up the role of Professor Martin in order to blend in with the humans, he begins to see a kind of hope and redemption in the humans’ imperfections, and he questions his marching orders. Mathematics or not, he becomes increasingly convinced that Martin’s family deserves to live, forcing him to confront the possibility of forgoing everything he has ever known and become a human. TOPICS AND QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. In the preface, our narrator explains his purpose and asks his people back home to set aside prejudice in the name of understanding. How is this plea to his fictional reader also directed at us, the actual readers? What prejudices must we set aside to understand our alien hero? 2. Our hero’s entrance into human life is . . . rocky, at best. How did his initial impressions of human life—noses, clothes, rain, and Cosmopolitan—shape the rest of his journey? Which of his first disconcerting realizations did you find the most surprising? 3. Starting with the possibility that the purpose of humanity is to “pursue the enlightenment of orgasm,” our hero is constantly seeking the solution to the meaning of human life. What does he

She imagined, now, what it would be like to accept herself completely. Every mistake she had ever made. Every mark on her body. Every dream she hadn't reached or pain she had felt. Every lust or longing she had suppressed. She imagined accepting it all. The way she accepted nature. The way she accepted a glacier or a puffin or the breach of a whale. She imagined seeing herself as just another brilliant freak of nature. Just another sentient animal, trying their best. And in doing so, she imagined what it was like to be free.

She imagined seeing herself as just another brilliant freak of nature. Just another sentient animal, trying their best. And in doing so, she imagined what it was like to be free. (Página138).

A Camus quote came to her, right in the middle of it. I may have not been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn’t. It probably wasn’t the best sign of how their nocturnal encounter was going, that she was thinking of Existential philosophy, or that this quote in particular was the one that appeared in her mind. But hadn’t Camus also said, ‘If something is going to happen to me, I want to be there’?

Nora had always had a problem accepting herself. From as far back as she could remember, she’d had the sense that she wasn’t enough. Her parents, who both had their own insecurities, had encouraged that idea. She imagined, now, what it would be like to accept herself completely. Every mistake she had ever made. Every mark on her body. Every dream she hadn’t reached or pain she had felt. Every lust or longing she had suppressed. She imagined accepting it all. The way she accepted nature. The way she accepted a glacier or a puffin or the breach of a whale. She imagined seeing herself as just another brilliant freak of nature. Just another sentient animal, trying their best. And in doing so, she imagined what it was like to be free.

Where we are from there are no comforting delusions, no religions, no impossible fiction. Where we are from there is no love and no hate. There is the purity of reason. Where we are from there are no crimes of passion because there is no passion. Where we are from there is no remorse because action has a logical motive and always results in the best outcome for the given situation. Where we are from there are no names, no families living together, no husbands and wives, no sulky teenagers, no madness. Where we are from we have solved the problem of fear because we have solved the problem of death. We will not die. Which means we can’t just let the universe do what it wants to do, because we will be inside it for eternity.

am just the librarian.’ ‘Librarians have knowledge. They guide you to the right books. The right worlds. They find the best places. Like soul-enhanced search engines.

She imagined, now, what it would be like to accept herself completely. Every mistake she had ever made. Every mark on her body. Every dream she hadn’t reached or pain she had felt. Every lust or longing she had suppressed. She imagined accepting it all. The way she accepted nature. The way she accepted a glacier or a puffin or the breach of a whale. She imagined seeing herself as just another brilliant freak of nature. Just another sentient animal, trying their best. And in doing so, she imagined what it was like to be free.

Librarians have knowledge. They guide you to the right books. The right worlds. They find the best places. Like soul enhanced search engines.

Humans were always doing things they didn't like doing. In fact, to my best estimate, at any one time only point three percent of humans were actively doing something they liked doing, and even when they did so, they felt an intense guilt about it and were fervently promising themselves they'd be back doing something horrendously unpleasant very shortly.

For now, I do what I know keeps me just about level. Exercise definitely helps me, as does yoga and absorbing myself in something or someone I love, so I keep doing these things. I suppose, in the absence of universal certainties, we are our own best laboratory.

Love (at its best) is a way to reclaim those lost parts of ourselves. Maybe its just about finding the person you can be your wierd self with. I helped her be her, and she helped me be me. If I offered her anything - it was the chance to be herself.

Couldn’t aspects of how we live in the modern world be responsible for how we feel in the modern world? Not just in terms of the stuff of modern life, but its values, too. The values that cause us to want more than we have. To worship work above play. To compare the worst bits of ourselves with the best bits of other people.

Librarians have knowledge. They guide you to the right books. The right worlds. They find the best places. Like soul-enhanced search engines. ... But you also have to know what you like. What to type into the metaphorical search box. And sometimes you have to try a few things before that comes clear.

Matt Haig writes in his spectacular book, Reasons to Stay Alive: ‘When we are trying to get better, the only truth that matters is what works for us…Hell, if licking wallpaper does it for you, do that… in the absence of universal certainties, we are our own best laboratory.

Not just in terms of the stuff of modern life, but its values, too. The values that cause us to want more than we have. To worship work above play. To compare the worst bits of ourselves with the best bits of other people. To feel like we always lack something.

The values that cause us to want more than we have. To worship work above play. To compare the worst bits of ourselves with the best bits of other people.

Nora always had a problem accepting herself. From as far back as she could remember, she'd had the sense that she wasn't enough. Her parents, who both had their own insecurities, had encouraged that idea. She imagined, now, what it would be like to accept herself completely. Every mistake she had ever made. Every mark on her body. Every dream she hadn't reached or pain she had felt. Every lust or longing she had suppressed. She imagined accepting it all. The way she accepted nature. The way she accepted a glacier or a puffin or the breach of a whale. She imagined seeing herself as just another brilliant freak of nature. Just another sentient animal, trying their best. And in doing so, she imagined what it was like to be free.

The key to happiness is finding the lie that suits you best.

So in effect, she swapped her best friend for a cat. In her actual life, she had never fallen out with Izzy. Nothing that dramatic. But after Izzy had gone to Australia, things had faded between them. Until their friendship became just a vapor trail of sporadic Facebook and Instagram likes and emoji-filled birthday messages. She looked back through the text conversations between her and Izzy and realized that even though there was still 10,000 miles between them, they had a much better relationship in this version of things.

A picture of a pipe is not a pipe, as Magritte told us. There is a permanent gap between the signifier and the thing signified. An online profile of your best friend is not your best friend. A status update about a day in the park is not a day in the park. And the desire to tell the world about how happy you are is not how happy you are.

But an ordinary life is not a guarantee of happiness. And, of course, this – being a teacher – was just a pretence. Maybe everyone was pretending something. Maybe every teacher and pupil at this school was pretending something. Maybe Shakespeare was right. Maybe all the world was a stage. Maybe without the act everything would fall apart. The key to happiness wasn’t being yourself, because what did that even mean? Everyone had many selves. No. The key to happiness is finding the lie that suits you best.

imagined seeing herself as just another brilliant freak of nature. Just another sentient animal, trying their best. And in doing so, she imagined what it was like to be free.

Then there are other serious psychological concerns. To be constantly presenting ourselves, and packaging ourselves, like potatoes pretending to be chips. To be constantly seeing everyone else looking their best, doing fun things that we are not doing.

In nature,” wrote Alice Walker, “nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they’re still beautiful.” Our bodies will never be as firm and symmetrical and ageless as those of bionic sex robots, so we need quite quickly to learn how to be happy with not having society’s unrealistic version of the “best” body, and a bit happier with having our body, as it is, not least because being unhappy with our body doesn’t make us look any better. It just makes us feel a lot worse. We are infinitely better than the most perfect-looking bionic sex robots. We are humans. Let’s not be ashamed to look like them.

But I think it spotlights the best & more frequently the worst of humanity so that increases my anxiety.

The key to happiness wasn’t being yourself, because what did that even mean? Everyone had many selves. No. The key to happiness is finding the lie that suits you best.

Humans were always doing things they didn’t like doing. In fact, to my best estimate, at any one time only point three percent of humans were actively doing something they liked doing, and even when they did so, they felt an intense guilt about it and were fervently promising themselves they’d be back doing something horrendously unpleasant very shortly.

I’d also heard that humans were a life-form of, at best, middling intelligence and prone to violence, deep sexual embarrassment, bad poetry, and walking around in circles.

Librarians have knowledge. They guide you to the right books. The right worlds. They find the best places. Like soul-enhanced search engines.' 'Exactly. But you also have to know what you like. What to type into the metaphorical search box. And sometimes you have to try a few things before that becomes clear.' 'I haven't got the stamina. I don't think I can do this.' 'The only way to learn is to live.

She felt unable to tell them she was grateful for the experience. She just smiled politely and did her best to avoid conversation.

She imagined seeing herself as just another brilliant freak of nature. Just another sentient animal, trying their best. And in doing so, she imagined what it was like to be free.

A former palace,' Joanna told her. 'Designed by a top Brazilian architect. I forget his name.' She looked it up. 'Oscar Niemeyer,' she said after a moment. 'Modernist. But this is meant to be more opulent than his usual stuff. Best hotel in Brazil...' And then Nora saw a small crowd of people holding out their phones with outstretched arms, as if beggars with bowls, filming her arrival.

Every life she had tried so far since entering the library had really been someone else's dream. The married life in the pub had been Dan's dream. The trip to Australia had been Izzy's dream, and her regret about not going had been a guilt for her best friend more than a sorrow for herself. The dream of her becoming a swimming champion belonged to her father. And okay, so it was true that she had been interested in the Arctic and being a glaciologist when she was younger, but that had been steered quite significantly by her chats with Mrs. Elm herself, back in the school library. And The Labyrinths, well, that had always been her brother's dream.

And yes, I just thought I'd send a message that, you know, I am out here living my best life. But I miss home after a while.

In one life she had quite a solitary time in Paris, and taught English at a college in Montparnasse and cycled by the Seine and read lots of books on park benches. In another, she was a yoga teacher with the neck mobility of an owl. In one life she had kept up swimming but had never tried to pursue the Olympics. She just did it for fun. In that life she was a lifeguard in the beach resort of Sitges, near Barcelona, was fluent in both Catalan and Spanish, and had a hilarious best friend called Gabriela who taught her how to surf, and who she shared an apartment with, five minutes from the beach.

You're all I've got, sis,' he said, his voice cracking a little. 'I know I haven't valued you. I know I wasn't always the best, growing up. But I had my own shit going on. Having to be a certain way because of Dad. Hiding my sexuality. I know it wasn't easy for you but it wasn't easy for me either. You were good at everything. School, swimming, music. I couldn't compete...Plus Dad was Dad and I had to be this fake vision of whatever he thought a man was.' He sighed. 'It's weird. We both probably remember it in different ways. But don't leave me, okay? Leaving the band was one thing. But don't leave existence. I couldn't cope with that.

Driving back to Cambridge cocooned in her expensive Audi, smelling almost nauseatingly of vinyl and plastic and other synthetic materials, weaving through busy traffic, the cars sliding by like forgotten lives, she was deeply wishing she had been able to see Mrs. Elm, the real one, before she had died. It would have been good to have one last game of chess with her before she passed away. And she thought of poor Leo, sat in a small windowless cell at a Bedford police station, waiting for Doreen to come and collect him. 'This is the best life,' she told herself, a little desperate now. 'This is the best life. I am staying here. This is the life for me. This is the best life. This is the best life.' But she knew she didn't have long.

There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness...