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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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Mark Haddon
Age: 61
Born: 1962
Born: October 28
Illustrator
Novelist
Poet
Screenwriter
Writer
Childhood
Happen
Happy
Happens
Children
Even
Appalling
Things
Sadness
Filled
More quotes by Mark Haddon
And this shows that sometimes people want to be stupid and they do not want to know the truth.
Mark Haddon
Fiction that responds to recent world events is a hostage to fortune because all momentous events look very different a year, two years, three years later.
Mark Haddon
Science and literature give me answers. And they ask me questions I will never be able to answer.
Mark Haddon
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
And it's best if you know a good thing is going to happen, like an eclipse or getting a microscope for Christmas. And it's bad if you know a bad thing is going to happen, like having a filling or going to France. But I think it is worst if you don't know whether it is a good thing or a bad thing which is going to happen.
Mark Haddon
The way of creating believable characters is not by conforming to a set of PC rules.
Mark Haddon
..and only sticks and stones can break my bones.
Mark Haddon
It exasperated her sometimes. The way men could be so sure of themselves. They put words together like sheds or shelves and you could stand on them they were so solid. And those feelings which overwhelmed you in the small hours turned to smoke.
Mark Haddon
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
...and there was nothing to do except to wait and to hurt.
Mark Haddon
Well, we're meant to be writing stories today.
Mark Haddon
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
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
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
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
When I was writing for children, I was writing genre fiction. It was like making a good chair. However beautiful it looked, it needed four legs of the same length, it had to be the right height and it had to be comfortable.
Mark Haddon
Indeed, I am repeatedly astonished by the number of really good writers who understand human beings so well on paper but don't know how to deal with them in real life.
Mark Haddon
As a teenager, I was always this strange mixture of kind of vice-captain of the rugby team and sensitive artist type the rest of the time. I was sent away to this public school in the middle of nowhere, and I think we managed to completely miss out on normal youth culture.
Mark Haddon
Stories about mental aberration and oddity only make sense in context. Just how do people live with someone who is peculiar, gifted, strange or alien? It's odd because there's a little part of me that wants to write about exotic, strange bizarre subjects. Instead, I've rather reluctantly realised that what I write about is families.
Mark Haddon
Bore children, and they stop reading. There's no room for self-indulgence or showing off or setting the scene.
Mark Haddon