And what he meant was that maths wasn't like life because in life there are no straightforward answers in the end Mark Haddon More Quotes by Mark Haddon More Quotes From Mark Haddon My book has a very simple surface, but there are layers of irony and paradox all the way through it. Mark Haddon simpleliteraturebook Show me the artist anywhere who's had an utterly stable mental life, and I'll buy you hot dinners for the rest of your life. Mark Haddon dinnerartisthot The way of creating believable characters is not by conforming to a set of PC rules. Mark Haddon creatingcharacterway 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 writingbookchildren ...and I went into the garden and lay down and looked at the stars in the sky and made myself negligible. Mark Haddon gardenstarssky What actually happens when you die is that your brain stops working and your body rots, like Rabbit did when he died and we buried him in the earth at the bottom of the garden. And all his molecules were broken down into other molecules and they went into the earth and were eaten by worms and went into the plants and if we go and dig in the same place in 10 years there will be nothing exept his skeleton left. And in 1,000 years even his skeleton will be gone. But that is all right because he is a part of the flowers and the apple tree and the hawthorn bush now. Mark Haddon skeletonsgardenflower People say that you always have to tell the truth. But they do not mean this because you are not allowed to tell old people that they are old and you are not allowed to tell people if they smell funny or if a grown-up has made a fart. And you are not allowed to say, 'I don't like you,' unless that person has been horrible to you. Mark Haddon smellmeanpeople I do not like strangers because I do not like people I have never met before. They are hard to understand. Mark Haddon metsstrangerpeople And when you look at the sky you know you are looking at stars which are hundreds and thousands of light-years away from you. And some of the stars don’t even exist anymore because their light has taken so long to get to us that they are already dead, or they have exploded and collapsed into red dwarfs. And that makes you seem very small, and if you have difficult things in you life it is nice to think that they are what is called negligible, which means they are so small you don’t have to take them into account when you are calculating something. Mark Haddon nicestarstaken If you came from Mars and tried to analyse British or American society through novels, you'd think our society was preponderantly full of middle-aged, slightly alcoholic, middle-class, intellectual men, most of whom are divorced from their families and have nothing to do with children. Mark Haddon yousocietymenchildren 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. Mark Haddon personthinkmenice 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 ridebettergoodpeople 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 lovelifepeopleworld The one thing you have to do if you write a book is put yourself in someone else's shoes. The reader's shoes. You've got to entertain them. Mark Haddon yourselfyoushoesbook B is for bestseller. Mark Haddon bestseller 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 meaningi-ammyselfchurch
