Mark Haddon quotes

Reading is a conversation. All books talk. But a good book listens as well. (Mark Haddon)
And this shows that sometimes people want to be stupid and they do not want to know the truth.
Mark Haddon
I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spend all your time thinking about them.
Mark Haddon
I like dogs. You always know what a dog is thinking. It has four moods. Happy, sad, cross and concentrating. Also, dogs are faithful and they do not tell lies because they cannot talk.
Mark Haddon
Everyone has learning difficulties, because learning to speak French or understanding relativity is difficult.
Mark Haddon
Sometimes we get sad about things and we don't like to tell other people that we are sad about them. We like to keep it a secret. Or sometimes, we are sad but we really don't know why we are sad, so we say we aren't sad but we really are.
Mark Haddon
I think people believe in heaven because they don't like the idea of dying, because they want to carry on living and they don't like the idea that other people will move into their house and put their things into the rubbish.
Mark Haddon
Being clever was when you looked at how things were and used the evidence to work out something new.
Mark Haddon
My book has a very simple surface, but there are layers of irony and paradox all the way through it.
Mark Haddon
I do not like strangers because I do not like people I have never met before. They are hard to understand.
Mark Haddon
Mother used to say it meant Christopher was a nice name because it was a story about being kind and helpful, but I do not want my name to mean a story about being kind and helpful. I want my name to mean me. (Mark Haddon)
I do not tell lies. Mother used to say that this was because I was a good person. But it is not because I am a good person. It is because I do not tell lie.
Mark Haddon
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
And then I thought that I had to be like Sherlock Holmes and I had to detach my mind at will to a remarkable degree so that I did not notice how much it was hurting inside my head.
Mark Haddon
But I said that you could still want something that is very unlikely to happen.
Mark Haddon
But I don't feel sad about it. Because Mother is dead. And because Mr. Shears isn't around anymore. So I would be feeling sad about something that isn't real and doesn't exist. And that would be stupid.
Mark Haddon
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
Then he asked if I didn't like things changing. And I said I wouldn't mind things changing if I became an astronaut, for example, which is one of the biggest changes you can imagine, apart from becoming a girl or dying.
Mark Haddon
And what he meant was that maths wasn't like life because in life there are no straightforward answers in the end.
Mark Haddon
All the other children at my school are stupid. Except I'm not meant to call them stupid, even though this is what they are.
Mark Haddon
Lots of things are mysteries. But that doesn't mean there isn't an answer to them. It's just that scientists haven't found the answer yet. (Mark Haddon)
And it occurred to him that there were two parts to being a better person. One part was thinking about other people. The other part was not giving a toss what other people thought.
Mark Haddon
On the fifth day, which was a Sunday, it rained very hard. I like it when it rains hard. It sounds like white noise everywhere, which is like silence but not empty.
Mark Haddon
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
That's important to me, to find the extraordinary inside the ordinary.
Mark Haddon