Mark Haddon Quotes

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

On the fifth day, which was a Sunday, it rained very hard. I like it when it rains hard. It sounds like white noise everywhere, which is like silence but not empty.

~ Mark Haddon

people believe in God because the world is very complicated and they think it is very unlikely that anything as complicated as a flying squirrel or the human eye or a brain could happen by chance.

~ Mark Haddon

I think I would make a very good astronaut.To be a good astronaut you have to be intelligent and I’m intelligent. You also have to understand how machines work and I’m good at understanding how machines work. You also have to be someone who would like being on their own in a tiny spacecraft thousands and thousands of miles away from the surface of the earth and not panic or get claustrophobia or homesick or insane. And I really like little spaces, so long as there is no one else in them with me. Sometimes when I want to be on my own I get into the airing cupboard outside the bathroom and slide in beside the boiler and pull the door closed behind me and sit there and think for hours and it makes me feel very calm.So I would have to be an astronaut on my own, or have my own part of the space craft which no one else could come into.And also there are no yellow things or brown things in a space craft, so that would be okay too.And I would have to talk to other people from Mission Control, but we would do that through a radio linkup and a TV monitor, so they wouldn’t be like real people who are strangers, but it would be like playing a computer game.Also I wouldn’t be homesick at all because I’d be surrounded by things I like, which are machines and computers and outer space. And I would be able to look out of a little window in the spacecraft and know that there was no one near me for thousands and thousands of miles, which is what I sometimes pretend at night in the summer when I go and lie on the lawn and look up at the sky and I put my hands round the sides of my face so that I can’t see the fence and the chimney and the washing line and I can pretend I’m in space.And all I could see would be stars. And stars are the places where molecules that life is made of were constructed billions of years ago. For example, all the iron in your blood which keeps you from being anemic was made in a star.And I would like it if I could take Toby with me into space, and that might be allowed because they sometimes do take animals into space for experiments, so if I could think of a good experiment you could do with a rat that didn’t hurt the rat, I could make them let me take Toby.But if they didn’t let me I would still go because it would be a Dream Come True.

~ Mark Haddon

And I know I can do this because I went to London on my own, and because I solved the mystery…and I was brave and I wrote a book and that means I can do anything.

~ Mark Haddon

... I will get a First Class Honors degree and I will become a scientist... And I know I can do this because I went to London on my own, and because I solved the mystery of Who Killed Wellington? and I found my mother and I was brave and I wrote a book and that means I can do anything.

~ Mark Haddon

That was the problem, wasn't it? You left home. But you never did become an adult. Not really. You just fucked up in different and more complicated ways.

~ Mark Haddon

At twenty life was like wrestling an octopus. Every moment mattered. At thirty it was a walk in the country. Most of the time your mind was somewhere else. By the time you got to seventy, it was probably like watching snooker on the telly.

~ Mark Haddon

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 dig in the same place in 10 years there will be nothing except his skeleton left. And in 1,000 years even his skeleton will be gone. But that is all right because he is part of the flowers and the apple tree and the hawthorn bush now.When people die they are sometimes put into coffins which means that they don't mix with the earth for a very long time until the wood of the coffin rots.But Mother was cremated. This means that she was put into a coffin and burnt and ground up and turned into ash and smoke. I do not know what happens to the ash and I couldn't ask at the crematorium because I didn't go to the funeral. But the smoke goes out of the chimney and into the air and sometimes I look up into the sky and I think that there are molecules of Mother up there, or in clouds over Africa or the Antartic, or coming down as rain in rainforests in Brazil, or in snow somewhere.

~ Mark Haddon

In life, you have to take lots of decisions and if you don't take decisions you would never do anything because you would spend all your time choosing between things you could do.

~ Mark Haddon

But in life you have to take lots of deductions and if you don't take decisions you would never do anything because you would spend all your time choosing between things you could do.So it is good to have a reason why you hate some things and why you like others.

~ Mark Haddon

I want my name to mean me.

~ Mark Haddon

Because time is not like space. And when you put something down somewhere, like a protractor or a biscuit, you can have a map in your head to tell you where you have left it, but even if you don't have a map it will still be there because a map is a representation of things that actually exist so you can find the protractor or the biscuits again. And a timetable is a map of time, except that if you don't have a timetable, time isn't there like the landing and the garden and the route to school.

~ Mark Haddon

And intuition is what people is what people use in life to make decisions.But logic can help you work out the right answer.

~ Mark Haddon

I like dogs. You always know what a dog is thinking. It has four moods. Happy, sad, cross and concentrating. Also, dogs are faithful and they do not tell lies because they cannot talk.

~ Mark Haddon

I think she cared more for that bloody dog than for me, for us. And maybe that's not so stupid, looking back... maybe it is easier living on your own looking after some stupid mutt than sharing your life with other actual human beings.

~ Mark Haddon

But I said that you could still want something that is very unlikely to happen.

~ Mark Haddon

Reading is a conversation. All books talk. But a good book listens as well.

~ Mark Haddon

Things can be funny when people are uneasy. It softens them up and stops them falling asleep on the sofa. I like those moments where people half-smile and half-wince.

~ Mark Haddon

Use your imagination, and you'll see that even the most narrow, humdrum lives are infinite in scope if you examine them with enough care.

~ Mark Haddon

I am really interested in eccentric minds. It's rather like being fascinated by how cars work. It's really boring if your car works all the time. But as soon as something happens, you get the bonnet up. If someone has an abnormal or dysfunctional state of mind, you get the bonnet up.

~ Mark Haddon

I like poetry when I don't quite understand why I like it. Poetry isn't just a question of wrapping something up and giving it to someone else to unwrap. It just doesn't work like that.

~ Mark Haddon