Mark Haddon Quotes
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I'm really lucky in that I can do lots of different things. It must be really hard to just be a poet or just be a novelist - a constant cycle of effort and exhaustion and recuperation.
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There was a time in my life when I was going in and out of houses that were extraordinarily different - from a working-class terrace in Northampton to the homes of friends who were really very wealthy. It was quite an odd position to be in, I realise looking back, and quite a nice one.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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When I was 13 or 14, I started devouring novels; literature took quite a while to take me over, but it caught up just in time to save me from becoming a mathematician.
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I was born too late for steam trains and a lazy eye meant I'd never be an astronaut.
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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.
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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.
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I knew there was a story; once you find a dog with a fork through it, you know there's a story there.
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I think I've learnt that there is no character so strange that you haven't shared their experience in some small way.
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Many children's writers don't have children of their own.
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It took me a long time to come out as someone who doesn't like film. It's a bit like when people say they don't like books: you get that sharp intake of breath.
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Science and literature give me answers. And they ask me questions I will never be able to answer.