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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

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Mark Haddon
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: October 28
Illustrator
Novelist
Poet
Screenwriter
Writer
Part
Debt
Realise
Children
Begin
Realising
Possibility
Literary
Fiction
Fewer
Literature
Speaks
Getting
Possibilities
Jobs
Partners
Speak
Escape
Debts

More quotes by Mark Haddon

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And it occurred to him that there were two parts to being a better person. One part was thinking about other people. The other part was not giving a toss what other people thought.
Mark Haddon
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Appalling things can happen to children. And even a happy childhood is filled with sadnesses.
Mark Haddon
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Curious Incident is not a book about asperger's....if anything it's a novel about difference, about being an outsider, about seeing the world in a surprising and revealing way. The book is not specifically about any specific disorder.
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I suffer depression only in the sense that I am a writer. We don't have proper jobs to go to. We are on our own all day. Show me a writer who doesn't get depressed: who has a completely stable mood. They'd be a garage mechanic or something.
Mark Haddon
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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.
Mark Haddon
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Writing for children is bloody difficult books for children are as complex as their adult counterparts, and they should therefore be accorded the same respect.
Mark Haddon
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..and only sticks and stones can break my bones.
Mark Haddon
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Siobhan said that when you are writing a book you have to include some descriptions of things. I said that I could take photographs and put them in the book. But she said the idea of a book was to describe things using words so that people could read them and make a picture in their own head.
Mark Haddon
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And this shows that sometimes people want to be stupid and they do not want to know the truth.
Mark Haddon
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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
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But 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. So it is good to have a reason why you hate some things and you like others.
Mark Haddon
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Madness doesn't happen to someone alone. Very few people have experiences that are theirs alone.
Mark Haddon
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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
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Being clever was when you looked at how things were and used the evidence to work out something new.
Mark Haddon
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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
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... He had always rather liked emergencies. Other people's at any rate. They put your own problems into perspective. It was like being on a ferry. You didn't have to think about what you had to do or where you had to go for the next few hours. It was all laid out for you.
Mark Haddon
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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
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The most difficult book I wrote was the fourth in a series of linked children's books. It was like pulling teeth because the publisher wanted exactly the same but completely different. I'd much rather just do something completely different even if there's a risk of it going wrong.
Mark Haddon
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Everyone has learning difficulties, because learning to speak French or understanding relativity is difficult.
Mark Haddon
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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.
Mark Haddon