As a kid, I didn't read a great deal of fiction, and I've forgotten most of what I did read.
Mark Haddon

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

B is for bestseller.
Mark Haddon

Bore children, and they stop reading. There's no room for self-indulgence or showing off or setting the scene.
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.
Mark Haddon

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

For me, disability is a way of getting some extremity, some kind of very difficult situation, that throws an interesting light on people.
Mark Haddon

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

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? When I find myself in church, I edit the hymns as I sing them.
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.
Mark Haddon


I don't mean that literary fiction is better than genre fiction, On the contrary; novels can perform two functions and most perform only one.
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.
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

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

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

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

I was born too late for steam trains and a lazy eye meant I'd never be an astronaut.
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.
Mark Haddon

I've written 16 children's books and five unpublished novels. Some of the latter were breathtakingly bad.
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.
Mark Haddon