Mark Haddon quotes - page 3

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)
... and I went into the garden and lay down and looked at the stars in the sky and made myself negligible. View quote
Mark Haddon
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. View quote
Mark Haddon
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. View quote
Mark Haddon
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. View quote
Mark Haddon
I've written 16 children's books and five unpublished novels. Some of the latter were breathtakingly bad. View quote
Mark Haddon
Many children's writers don't have children of their own. View quote
Mark Haddon
There's something with the physical size of America... American writers can write about America and it can still feel like a foreign country. View quote
Mark Haddon
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. View quote
Mark Haddon
Bore children, and they stop reading. There's no room for self-indulgence or showing off or setting the scene. View quote
Mark Haddon
I knew there was a story; once you find a dog with a fork through it, you know there's a story there. (Mark Haddon)
As a kid, I didn't read a great deal of fiction, and I've forgotten most of what I did read. View quote
Mark Haddon
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. View quote
Mark Haddon
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. View quote
Mark Haddon
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 roller coaster ride. View quote
Mark Haddon
Siobhan says that if you raise one eyebrow it can means lots of different things. It can mean 'I want to do sex with you' and it can also mean 'I think what you just said was very stupid. View quote
Mark Haddon
He was asking too many questions and he was asking them too quickly. They were stacking up in my head like loaves in the factory where Uncle Terry works. The factory is a bakery and he operates the slicing machines. And sometimes a slicer is not working fast enough but the bread keeps coming and there is a blockage. I sometimes think of my mind as a machine, but not always as a bread-slicing machine. It makes it easier to explain to other people what is going on inside it. View quote
Mark Haddon
Madness doesn't happen to someone alone. Very few people have experiences that are theirs alone. View quote
Mark Haddon
I think I've learnt that there is no character so strange that you haven't shared their experience in some small way. View quote
Mark Haddon
Siobhan said that when you are writing a book you have to include some descriptions of things. I said that I could take photographs and put them in the book. But she said the idea of a book was to describe things using words so that people could read them and make a picture in their own head. View quote
Mark Haddon
Obviously I have a capacity for feeling extreme anxiety, and there are people out there who don't. I'm to some extent rather jealous of them. (Mark Haddon)
I really like the idea of being a bit unpredictable. I'm known for being a nice, easy-going person with a straightforward exterior. So I think a bit of me wants to be sort of sly and devious. View quote
Mark Haddon
I like it when it rains hard. It sounds like white noise everywhere, which is like silence but not empty. View quote
Mark Haddon
Sticks and stones can break my bones and I have my Swiss Army Knife if they hit me and if I kill them it will be self defense and I won't go to prison. View quote
Mark Haddon
Metaphors are lies. View quote
Mark Haddon