How to Stop Time

by Matt Haig

To give you an idea: I was born well over four hundred years ago on the third of March 1581,

The speed of ageing among those with anageria fluctuates a little, but generally it is a 1:15 ratio.

‘I am four hundred and thirty-nine years old’

I will give you the exact life you want – any life at all – but every eight years, as usual, you’ll get a call and, before you choose your next identity, I’ll ask you to do something.’

Camille, our French teacher.

Forever, Emily Dickinson said, is composed of nows. But how do you inhabit the now you are in? How do you stop the ghosts of all the other nows from getting in? How, in short, do you live?

My name – my original name – was Estienne Thomas Ambroise Christophe Hazard.

‘I was born on the third of March, in the year fifteen eighty-one.

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

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.

All you can do with the past is carry it around, feeling its weight slowly increase, praying it never crushes you completely.

Change is just what life is. It is the only constant I know.

‘The first rule,’ I say wearily, ‘is that you don’t fall in love.’

‘Love is pain. It’s easier not to.’

the main lesson of history is: humans don’t learn from history.

For years now I had convinced myself that the sadness of the memories weighed more and lasted longer than the moments of happiness themselves.

now, I was starting to feel that you couldn’t do mathematics with emotions. In protecting yourself from hurt you could create a new, subtler type of pain. It is a dilemma.

‘A kiss,’ she said, ‘is like music. It stops time . . .

The human mind has its own. . . prisons.

‘You can’t choose where you are born, you can’t decide who won’t leave you, you can’t choose much. A life has unchangeable tides the same as history does. But there is still room inside it for choice. For decisions.’

‘If only we could find a way to stop time,’ said her husband. ‘That’s what we need to work on. You know, for when a moment of happiness floats along. We could swing our net and catch it like a butterfly, and have that moment for ever.’

Zelda was now looking across the crowded bar. ‘The trouble is they stick pins in butterflies. And then they are dead . .

There is no possible way of living in a world without books or trees or sunsets.

Time moves forwards. We have the luxury of time but we still can’t reverse it. We can’t stop it.

It is over in two seconds but I think this is the moment in which I have to admit to myself that I am in love for the first time in four centuries.

‘There comes a time when the only way to start living is to tell the truth. To be who you really are, even if it is dangerous.’

People you love never die.

They live in your mind, the way they always lived inside you. You keep their light alive. If you remember them well enough, they can still guide you, like the shine of long-extinguished stars could guide ships in unfamiliar waters.

Love is where you find the meaning. Those seven years I was with her contained more than anything else. Do you understand? You can take all the years before and since and weigh them next to those, and they wouldn’t stand a chance.

The time ahead of you is like the land beyond the ice. You can guess what it could be like but you can never know. All you know is the moment you are in.

‘Everything is going to be all right. Or, if not, everything is going to be, so let’s not worry.’

Tom will have to decide once and for all whether to remain stuck in the past or to finally begin living in the present.