Mark Haddon Quotes

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

Light, Difficult, Getting

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

Sunday, Children, Book

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

Life, Love, Find

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

Children, Getting, Escape

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

Good, Book, Darkness

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

Find, Big, Religious

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

Hope, Gay, Writing

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

Enjoy, Put, Chance

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

Great, Read, Deal

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, Off, Reading

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

Good, Bad, Children

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

Good, Big, Wanted

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

Mean, Two, Fiction

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

Through, Find, Once

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, Writing, Thought

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

Time, Around, Looking

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

Small, Write, Within

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

Lazy, Born, Late

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

Home, Long, Enough

I've written 16 children's books and five unpublished novels.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

Bad, Children, Books

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, Start, Kids

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, Done, Another

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

Forget, Writing, Boring

Many children's writers don't have children of their own.
Mark Haddon

Children, Writers

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Biography

Nationality: English

Born: September 26, 1962

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Cite this Page: Citation

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