Most of my work consisted of crossing out. Crossing out was the secret of all good writing. — Mark Haddon Copy Share Image
I've written 16 children's books and five unpublished novels. Some of the latter were breathtakingly bad. — Mark Haddon Copy Share Image
Jane Austen writes about these humdrum lives with such empathy that they seem endlessly fascinating — Mark Haddon Copy Share Image
I've always really enjoyed writing different things because I get bored very easily. — Mark Haddon Copy Share Image
Writing for children is bloody difficult; books for children are as complex as their adult counterparts, and they should therefore be accorded… — Mark Haddon Copy Share Image
I don't remember deciding to become a writer. You decide to become a dentist or a postman. For me, writing is like… — Mark Haddon Copy Share Image
If one book's done this well, you want to write another one that does just as well. There's that horror of the… — Mark Haddon Copy Share Image
If you enjoy math and you write novels, it's very rare that you'll get a chance to put your math into a… — Mark Haddon Copy Share Image
The main impetus for being a writer is thinking, 'I could invent another world. I'm not terribly keen on this one.' — Mark Haddon Copy Share Image
There's something with the physical size of America... American writers can write about America and it can still feel like a foreign… — Mark Haddon Copy Share Image
I suffer depression only in the sense that I am a writer. We don't have proper jobs to go to. We are… — Mark Haddon Copy Share Image
Jane Austen was writing about boring people with desperately limited lives. We forget this because we've seen too many of her books… — Mark Haddon Copy Share Image
Indeed, I am repeatedly astonished by the number of really good writers who understand human beings so well on paper but don't… — Mark Haddon Copy Share Image
I think the U.K. is too small to write about from within it and still make it seem foreign and exotic and… — Mark Haddon Copy Share Image
If you're trying to be a successful writer, and you go into a second-hand bookshop, it's the graveyard of people whose books… — Mark Haddon Copy Share Image
I started writing books for children because I could illustrate them myself and because, in my innocence, I thought they'd be easier. — Mark Haddon Copy Share Image
I think most writers feel like they're on the outside looking in much of the time. All of us feel, to a… — Mark Haddon Copy Share Image
The one thing you have to do if you write a book is put yourself in someone else's shoes. The reader's shoes.… — Mark Haddon Copy Share Image
Stories about mental aberration and oddity only make sense in context. Just how do people live with someone who is peculiar, gifted,… — Mark Haddon Copy Share Image
Siobhan said that when you are writing a book you have to include some descriptions of things. I said that I could… — Mark Haddon Copy Share Image
When I was writing for children, I was writing genre fiction. It was like making a good chair. It needed four legs… — Mark Haddon Copy Share Image
I am atheist in a very religious mould. I'm always asking myself the big questions. Where did we come from? Is there… — Mark Haddon Copy Share Image
I'm a writer! If you work in an office, it dampens you. It makes you fit a routine. The effect of being… — Mark Haddon Copy Share Image
When I was writing for children, I was writing genre fiction. It was like making a good chair. However beautiful it looked,… — Mark Haddon Copy Share Image
But I said that you could still want something that is very unlikely to happen. — Mark Haddon Copy Share Image
“So often these days she seemed to hover between worlds, none of them wholly real.” — Mark Haddon Copy Share Image
And I know I can do this because I went to London on my own, and because I solved the mystery…and I was brave… — Mark Haddon Copy Share Image
And what he meant was that maths wasn't like life because in life there are no straightforward answers in the end — Mark Haddon Copy Share Image
“when you describe something by using a word for something that it isn’t. This means that the word metaphor is a metaphor. I” — Mark Haddon Copy Share Image
“They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.” — Mark Haddon Copy Share Image
“Places remained and time flowed through them like wind through the grass. Right now. This was the future turning into the past. One thing… — Mark Haddon Copy Share Image
I suffer depression only in the sense that I am a writer. We don't have proper jobs to go to. We are on our… — Mark Haddon Copy Share Image
I better make the plot good. I wanted to make it grip people on the first page and have a big turning point in… — Mark Haddon Copy Share Image
“And it was strange because he was calling, "Christopher. . . ? Christopher. . . ?" and I could see my name written out… — Mark Haddon Copy Share Image
A lot of roles for people with disabilities are quite patronising. It's a real pity when they are just used to give dull PC… — Mark Haddon Copy Share Image
