Mark Haddon Quotes - Page 5

Quotes about:

• 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.

  14 Copy quote

• 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

  8 Copy quote

• Things can be funny when people are uneasy. It softens them up and stops them falling asleep on the sofa. I like those moments where people half-smile and half-wince.

  Mark Haddon

  Fall, People, Half

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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 at the chance.

  Mark Haddon

  Writing, Math, Chance

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

  4 Copy quote

• You make a film you feel is as real as possible and hope people react as though it were real.

  Mark Haddon

  Real, People, Film

  4 Copy quote

• Family, that slippery word, a star to every wandering bark, and everyone sailing under a different sky.

  Mark Haddon

  Stars, Sky, Sailing

  "The Red House by Mark Haddon - review" by Carol Birch, www.theguardian.com. May 9, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

• Most murders are committed by someone who is known to the victim. In fact, you are most likely to be murdered by a member of your own family on Christmas day.

  Mark Haddon

  Facts, Murder, Victim

  Mark Haddon, Simon Stephens (2013). “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time: The Play”, p.21, A&C Black

  4 Copy quote

• I like poetry when I don't quite understand why I like it. Poetry isn't just a question of wrapping something up and giving it to someone else to unwrap. It just doesn't work like that.

  Mark Haddon

  Giving, Poetry Is, Wrapping

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

  4 Copy quote

• Jane Austen writes about these humdrum lives with such empathy that they seem endlessly fascinating

  Mark Haddon

  Writing, Empathy, Humdrum

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

  4 Copy quote

• And I go out of Father's house and I walk down the street, and it is very quiet even thought it is the middle of the day and I can't hear any noise except birds singing and wind and sometimes buildings falling down in the distance, and if I stand very close to traffic lights I can hear a little click as the colors change.

  Mark Haddon

  Distance, Father, Fall

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  10 Copy quote

• It exasperated her sometimes. The way men could be so sure of themselves. They put words together like sheds or shelves and you could stand on them they were so solid. And those feelings which overwhelmed you in the small hours turned to smoke.

  Mark Haddon

  Men, Feelings, Together

  4 Copy quote

• I have very fond memories of swimming in Walden Pond when we lived in Boston. You'd swim past a log and see all these turtles sunning themselves. Slightly disturbing if you thought about how many more were swimming around your toes, but also rather wonderful.

  Mark Haddon

  Memories, Swimming, Past

  7 Copy quote

• At twenty life was like wrestling an octopus. Every moment mattered. At thirty it was a walk in the country. Most of the time your mind was somewhere else. By the time you got to seventy, it was probably like watching snooker on the telly.

  Mark Haddon

  Country, Wrestling, Somewhere Else

  17 Copy quote

• 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 own all day. Show me a writer who doesn't get depressed: who has a completely stable mood. They'd be a garage mechanic or something.

  Mark Haddon

  Jobs, Suffering, Mood

  4 Copy quote

• I went to boarding school and then I went to Oxford, and I know how easy it is for certain groups of people to become wholly insulated from ordinary life.

  Mark Haddon

  School, Oxford, People

  "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.

  4 Copy quote

• ... He had always rather liked emergencies. Other people's at any rate. They put your own problems into perspective. It was like being on a ferry. You didn't have to think about what you had to do or where you had to go for the next few hours. It was all laid out for you.

  Mark Haddon

  Thinking, People, Perspective

  4 Copy quote

• 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 and I wrote a book and that means I can do anything.

  Mark Haddon

  Book, Mean, Brave

  Marilyn Herbert, Mark Haddon (2006). “Discusses the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time: The Complete Package for Readers and Leaders”, p.63, Bookclub-in-a-Box

  4 Copy quote

• 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 deal with them in real life.

  Mark Haddon

  Real, Numbers, Paper

  4 Copy quote

• I better make the plot good. I wanted to make it grip people on the first page and have a big turning point in the middle, as there is, and construct the whole thing like a bit of a roller coaster ride...

  Mark Haddon

  People, Plot, Pages

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

  7 Copy quote

• I am really interested in eccentric minds. It's rather like being fascinated by how cars work. It's really boring if your car works all the time. But as soon as something happens, you get the bonnet up. If someone has an abnormal or dysfunctional state of mind, you get the bonnet up.

  Mark Haddon

  Car, Mind, Abnormal

  11 Copy quote

• I read very, very little fiction as a kid. All the books I can remember are junior science books.

  Mark Haddon

  Book, Kids, Fiction

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  4 Copy quote

• 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 want, in terms of bookshops, theatre, cinema, conversation. But it's near enough to London to get here in an hour, and it's near enough to huge open spaces without which I would go insane.

  Mark Haddon

  Cities, Oxford, Space

  6 Copy quote

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