Matt Haig Quotes

AIDS is a horrible disease, and the people who catch it deserve compassion.

Abraham Lincoln suffered from depression and yet was a great president. Don’t you think that should help with the stigma of mental illness? We should tell everyone about that.

All I can say to people who don't think depression is a real thing, or say 'just suck it up and get over it' - they just really have no idea. You have to give people the benefit of the doubt that they're doing the best they can to get through it.

I haven't been in the military, but I've known my share of pain. It allows me to sit with someone who's struggling and not be afraid.

People with HIV and AIDS are nothing to be afraid of. They are people just like every single one of us, and each has a story to tell. These people should be helped, embraced, and not dismissed. We need to open our hearts and our minds to them, and we just may learn we're pretty much all the same.

I think it's a stereotype that soldiers don't talk, because my experience is that they will talk if they are met with empathy and no judgment.

So much progress has been made with topics like mental illness and drug abuse and sexual identity.

I went on French television for 20 minutes. It was very embarrassing to have to say, 'I'm not dead. I'm well. I'm not ill, and I don't have AIDS.' I hated doing it, because it was so insulting to those who really did have AIDS.

I have mental illness in my family. I have a lot of compassion for those people.

It doesn't matter who you are: being human is being human. Everyone has days that are challenging.

If we know it's happening, and we're not having the discussion, we're contributing to the problem of making it seem like people can't open up.

We all have our things that we go through, and I wanted to be an artist that people could listen to and feel like they're not alone. I want to be empowering.

When one woman found out I had multiple sclerosis, she said to me, 'My heart bleeds for you.' I said to her, 'Well, my heart bleeds for you, because you're an idiot.'

I don't think it's helpful to put them all in a box and say people are evil and freaks because they have gotten to the point where they have fallen out of the community of what it is to be a human being. That's worthy of investigation.

We see people talking to themselves all the time. We always have. Particularly if they're homeless people or at all questionable, there's a sense of, 'That guy's crazy!' I see that now with a much more empathetic eye.

You are no less or more of a man or a woman or a human for having depression than you would be for having cancer or cardiovascular disease or a car accident.

My goal is just to inspire. To tell people that's going through the same thing that I went through, that there's somebody out there that knows… that can relate.

You can never just write off a person as crazy. I think that is the most inhumane thing you can do to someone without physically abusing them.

I have gotten nothing but love since I was diagnosed from the whole metal community. I guess that is true about both David Lee Roth and Eddie Van Halen. David was very kind to me especially when I was limping and falling and when my hands started getting weak.

If you're in a dark place, you're there for a reason. And the only way to get through to those kids or to other people going through the same thing is really to meet them in that dark place and then slowly bring them to the light.

It's easier to say people are crazy than to try to figure out why.

There's stigmas attached to anything that makes you, in the public's eye, seem weak. So of course, you know, you're in a business where your image, and the way people perceive you, you are taught, is important.

We are all human beings. We all go through a lot at certain times of our lives.

I never hate my bullies from high school. I actually kind of appreciate them. If it wasn't for that boot camp training of how the world treats gay people and especially drag queens, I don't know if I would have survived as well as I have.

I would never post something making fun of depression or mental health, or picking at people.