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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 bit of a roller coaster ride...

Mark Haddon

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Mark Haddon
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: October 28
Illustrator
Novelist
Poet
Screenwriter
Writer
Thing
Middle
Grip
Make
Point
Construct
Good
Bigs
Constructs
Like
Better
Ride
People
Wanted
Plot
Firsts
Turning
Coaster
First
Page
Coasters
Whole
Pages
Roller

More quotes by Mark Haddon

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I do not tell lies. Mother used to say that this was because I was a good person. But it is not because I am a good person. It is because I do not tell lie.
Mark Haddon
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And I go out of Father's house and I walk down the street, and it is very quiet even thought it is the middle of the day and I can't hear any noise except birds singing and wind and sometimes buildings falling down in the distance, and if I stand very close to traffic lights I can hear a little click as the colors change.
Mark Haddon
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My book has a very simple surface, but there are layers of irony and paradox all the way through it.
Mark Haddon
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Well, we're meant to be writing stories today.
Mark Haddon
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I have very fond memories of swimming in Walden Pond when we lived in Boston. You'd swim past a log and see all these turtles sunning themselves. Slightly disturbing if you thought about how many more were swimming around your toes, but also rather wonderful.
Mark Haddon
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The secret of contentment lay in ignoring many things completely.
Mark Haddon
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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
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There's something rather wonderful about the fact that Oxford is a very small city that contains most of the cultural and metropolitan facilities you could want, in terms of bookshops, theatre, cinema, conversation. But it's near enough to London to get here in an hour, and it's near enough to huge open spaces without which I would go insane.
Mark Haddon
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There's something with the physical size of America... American writers can write about America and it can still feel like a foreign country.
Mark Haddon
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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
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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 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
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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
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The way of creating believable characters is not by conforming to a set of PC rules.
Mark Haddon
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How pleased we are to have our eyes opened but how easily we close them again.
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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Science and literature give me answers. And they ask me questions I will never be able to answer.
Mark Haddon
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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
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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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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