Mark Haddon Quotes

137 quotes in 2112 categories

• Indeed, I am repeatedly astonished by the number of really good writers who understand human beings so well on paper but don't know how to…
• Stories about mental aberration and oddity only make sense in context. Just how do people live with someone who is peculiar, gifted, strange or alien?…
• The most difficult book I wrote was the fourth in a series of linked children's books. It was like pulling teeth because the publisher wanted…
• There's something rather wonderful about the fact that Oxford is a very small city that contains most of the cultural and metropolitan facilities you could…
• For me, disability is a way of getting some extremity, some kind of very difficult situation, that throws an interesting light on people.
• From a good book, I want to be taken to the very edge. I want a glimpse into that outer darkness.
• Most adults, unlike most children, understand the difference between a book that will hold them spellbound for a rainy Sunday afternoon and a book that…
• Every life is narrow. Our only escape is not to run away, but to learn to love the people we are and the world in…
• If you enjoy math and you write novels, it's very rare that you'll get a chance to put your math into a novel. I leapt…
• Reading is a conversation. All books talk. But a good book listens as well.
• At 20, 25, 30, we begin to realise that the possibilities of escape are getting fewer. We have jobs, children, partners, debts. This is the…
• With English literature, if you do a bit of shonky spelling, no one dies, but if you're half-way through a maths calculation and you stick…
• Appalling things can happen to children. And even a happy childhood is filled with sadnesses.
• As a kid, I didn't read a great deal of fiction, and I've forgotten most of what I did read.
• Bore children, and they stop reading. There's no room for self-indulgence or showing off or setting the scene.
• Children simply don't make the distinction; a book is either good or bad. And some of the books they think are good are very, very…
• I don't mean that literary fiction is better than genre fiction, On the contrary; novels can perform two functions and most perform only one.
• I knew there was a story; once you find a dog with a fork through it, you know there's a story there.
• I like having my back pressed against a wall and being made to work harder so I don't embarrass myself.
• I read very, very little fiction as a kid. All the books I can remember are junior science books.

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