Mark Haddon Quotes - Page 4

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But I said that you could still want something that is very unlikely to happen.

Mark Haddon

Want Something, Unlikely, Said

Mark Haddon (2012). “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time: Vintage Children's Classics”, p.32, Random House

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..because when we look up into the sky at night there will be no darkness, just the blazing light of billions and billions of stars, all falling.

Mark Haddon

Stars, Fall, Night

Mark Haddon, Simon Stephens (2013). “Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time: The Play”, p.9, A&C Black

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Usually people look at you when they're talking to you. I know that they're working out what I'm thinking, but I can't tell what they're thinking. It is like being in a room with a one-way mirror in a spy film.

Mark Haddon

Thinking, Mirrors, Talking

Marilyn Herbert, Mark Haddon (2006). “Discusses the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time: The Complete Package for Readers and Leaders”, p.71, Bookclub-in-a-Box

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And Father said, "Christopher, do you understand that I love you?" And I said "Yes," because loving someone is helping them when they get into trouble, and looking after them, and telling them the truth, and Father looks after me when I get into trouble, like coming to the police station, and he looks after me by cooking meals for me, and he always tells me the truth, which means that he loves me.

Mark Haddon

Father, Love You, Mean

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You love someone, you've got to let something go.

Mark Haddon

Passenger Seat, Love Someone

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Humour and high seriousness... Perfect bedfellows, I think. Though I usually phrase it in terms of comedy and darkness. Comedy without darkness rapidly becomes trivial. And darkness without comedy rapidly becomes unbearable.

Mark Haddon

Thinking, Perfect, Darkness

"'I'm flattered, amazed, deeply moved and sometimes a little dizzy'". The Guardian interview, www.theguardian.com. February 2, 2004.

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Siobhan also says that if you close your mouth and breathe out loudly through your nose it can mean that you are relaxed, or that you are bored, or that you are angry and it all depends on how much air comes out of your nose and how fast and what shape your mouth is when you do it and how you are sitting and what you just said before and hundreds of other things which are too complicated to work out in a few seconds.

Mark Haddon

Mean, Air, Work Out

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As a teenager, I was always this strange mixture of kind of vice-captain of the rugby team and sensitive artist type the rest of the time. I was sent away to this public school in the middle of nowhere, and I think we managed to completely miss out on normal youth culture.

Mark Haddon

Teenager, Team, School

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People think that alien spaceships would be solid and made of metal and have lights all over them and move slowly through the sky because that is how we would build a spaceship if we were able to build one that big. But aliens, if they exist, would probably be very different from us. They might look like big slugs, or be flat like reflections. Or they might be bigger than planets. Or they might not have bodies at all. They might just be information, like in a computer. And their spaceships might look like clouds, or be made up of unconnected objects like dust or leaves.

Mark Haddon

Moving, Reflection, Thinking

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The word "metaphor" means carrying something from one place to another . . . and it is when you describe something by using a word for something that it isn't. This means that the word "metaphor" is a metaphor. I think it should be called a lie because a pig is not like a day and people people do not have skeletons in their cupboards. And when I try and make a picture of the phrase in my head it just confuses me because imagining and apple in someone's eye doesn't have anything to do with liking someone a lot and it makes you forget what the person was talking about.

Mark Haddon

Lying, Mean, Eye

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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 exactly the same but completely different. I'd much rather just do something completely different even if there's a risk of it going wrong.

Mark Haddon

Children, Book, Risk

"Finding the vital spark". Interview with Nicholas Wroe, www.theguardian.com. September 23, 2005.

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Eventually scientists will discover something that explains ghosts, just like they discovered electricity, which explained lightning, and it might be something about people's brains, or something about the earth's magnetic field, or it might be some new force altogether. And then ghosts won't be mysteries. They will be like electricity and rainbows and nonstick frying pans.

Mark Haddon

People, Rainbow, Brain

"The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time". Book by Mark Haddon, May, 2003.

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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 kudos to a drama, or when they're wheeled on in a tokenistic way without any real involvement in the plot.

Mark Haddon

Real, Drama, People

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He really did not care whether he survived or not, so long as it rendered him unconscious and absolved him of responsibility.

Mark Haddon

Responsibility, Long, Care

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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

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Use your imagination and you'll see that even the most narrow, humdrum lives are infinite in scope if you examine them with enough care.

Mark Haddon

Imagination, Use, Care

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

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The way of creating believable characters is not by conforming to a set of PC rules.

Mark Haddon

Character, Creating, Way

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Appalling things can happen to children. And even a happy childhood is filled with sadnesses.

Mark Haddon

Children, Sadness, Childhood

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There was a time in my life when I was going in and out of houses that were extraordinarily different - from a working-class terrace in Northampton to the homes of friends who were really very wealthy. It was quite an odd position to be in, I realise looking back, and quite a nice one.

Mark Haddon

Nice, Home, Class

"Mark Haddon: 'Don't go out and buy an Aston Martin, is the only rule'" by Susanna Rustin, www.theguardian.com. May 4, 2013.

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What I love about the theatre is that it's always metaphorical. It's like going back to being a kid again, and we're all pretending in a room. Sometimes, when the pretending really works, I find it much, much more moving than something on film.

Mark Haddon

Moving, Kids, Theatre

"Mark Haddon: 'What I love about theatre is that it's like being a kid again'". Interview with Carole Cadwalladr, www.theguardian.com. March 27, 2010.

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Fiction that responds to recent world events is a hostage to fortune because all momentous events look very different a year, two years, three years later.

Mark Haddon

Years, Two, World

"I'm flattered, amazed, deeply moved and sometimes a little dizzy". Live chat, www.theguardian.com. February 2, 2004.

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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

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And this shows that people want to be stupid and they do not want to know the truth. And it shows that something called Occam's razor is true. And Occam's razor is not a razor that men shave with but a Law, and it says: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. Which is Latin and it means: No more things should be presumed to exist than are absolutely necessary. Which means that a murder victim is usually killed by someone known to them and fairies are made out of paper and you can't talk to someone who is dead.

Mark Haddon

Latin, Stupid, Mean

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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

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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.

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Born: September 26, 1962
Occupation: Novelist
Cite this Page: Citation

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