Mark Haddon Quotes About Literature

Quotes about: Literature

• 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 will put them in touch with a part of themselves they didn't even know existed.

  Mark Haddon

  Children, Book, Sunday

  FaceBook post by Mark Haddon from Apr 08, 2013

• I think most writers feel like they're on the outside looking in much of the time... All of us feel, to a certain extent, alienated from the stuff going on around us.

  Mark Haddon

  Thinking, Literature, Stuff

  "The Curiously Irresistible Literary Debut of Mark Haddon". PowellsBooks Interview, www.powells.com. October 10, 2006.

• Reading is a conversation. All books talk. But a good book listens as well.

  Mark Haddon

  Book, Reading, Literature

  "B is for bestseller" by Mark Haddon, www.theguardian.com. April 11, 2004.

• I am atheist in a very religious mould. I'm always asking myself the big questions. Where did we come from? Is there a meaning to all of this? I read the King James Bible, as all English writers should. And when I find myself in church, I edit the hymns as I sing them.

  Mark Haddon

  Religious, Atheist, Hymns

  "B is for bestseller" by Mark Haddon, www.theguardian.com. April 11, 2004.

• Writing for children is bloody difficult; books for children are as complex as their adult counterparts, and they should therefore be accorded the same respect.

  Mark Haddon

  Children, Book, Writing

• Science and literature give me answers. And they ask me questions I will never be able to answer.

  Mark Haddon

  Giving, Answers, Literature

• The one thing you have to do if you write a book is put yourself in someone else's shoes. The reader's shoes. You've got to entertain them.

  Mark Haddon

  Book, Writing, Shoes

• If one book's done this well, you want to write another one that does just as well. There's that horror of the second novel that doesn't match up.

  Mark Haddon

  Book, Writing, Doe

• When I was writing for children, I was writing genre fiction. It was like making a good chair. However beautiful it looked, it needed four legs of the same length, it had to be the right height and it had to be comfortable.

  Mark Haddon

  Children, Writing, Fiction

  "B is for bestseller". www.theguardian.com. April 11, 2004.

• From a good book, I want to be taken to the very edge. I want a glimpse into that outer darkness.

  Mark Haddon

  Book, Taken, Darkness

  "B is for bestseller" by Mark Haddon, www.theguardian.com. April 11, 2004.

• 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 which we find ourselves.

  Mark Haddon

  Running, People, Literature

• 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 part of us to which literary fiction speaks.

  Mark Haddon

  Jobs, Children, Fiction

  "B is for bestseller" by Mark Haddon, www.theguardian.com. April 11, 2004.

• I don't remember deciding to become a writer. You decide to become a dentist or a postman. For me, writing is like being gay. You finally admit that this is who you are, you come out and hope that no one runs away.

  Mark Haddon

  Running, Writing, Gay

  "B is for bestseller" by Mark Haddon, www.theguardian.com. April 11, 2004.

• Jane Austen was writing about boring people with desperately limited lives. We forget this because we've seen too many of her books on screen.

  Mark Haddon

  Book, Writing, People

  "B is for bestseller" by Mark Haddon, www.theguardian.com. April 11, 2004.

• My book has a very simple surface, but there are layers of irony and paradox all the way through it.

  Mark Haddon

  Book, Simple, Literature

• No one wants to know how clever you are. They don't want an insight into your mind, thrilling as it might be. They want an insight into their own.

  Mark Haddon

  Clever, Mind, Literature

• 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 in an extra zero, everything just crashes into the ravine.

  Mark Haddon

  Zero, Math, Half

• If kids like a picture book, they're going to read it at least 50 times. Read anything that often, and even minor imperfections start to feel like gravel in the bed.

  Mark Haddon

  Book, Kids, Imperfection

• 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 bad indeed.

  Mark Haddon

  Children, Book, Thinking

  "B is for bestseller" by Mark Haddon, www.theguardian.com. April 11, 2004.

• 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

  Children, Book, Writing

• I think the U.K. is too small to write about from within it and still make it seem foreign and exotic and interesting.

  Mark Haddon

  Travel, Writing, Thinking

• Many childrens writers dont have children of their own

  Mark Haddon

  Children, Literature, Bedtime

• When I was 13 or 14, I started devouring novels; literature took quite a while to take me over, but it caught up just in time to save me from becoming a mathematician.

  Mark Haddon

  Becoming, Literature, Devouring

• I've worked in television long enough to know that when you stop enjoying that type of thing you go home and do something else.

  Mark Haddon

  Home, Long, Television

• There's something with the physical size of America... American writers can write about America and it can still feel like a foreign country.

  Mark Haddon

  Country, Travel, Writing

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