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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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Mark Haddon
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: October 28
Illustrator
Novelist
Poet
Screenwriter
Writer
Book
Complexes
Children
Complex
Writing
Adults
Therefore
Respect
Accorded
Books
Counterparts
Literature
Bloody
Difficult
Adult

More quotes by 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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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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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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I think good books have to make a few people angry.
Mark Haddon
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Many childrens writers dont have children of their own
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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What I love about the theatre is that it's always metaphorical. It's like going back to being a kid again, and we're all pretending in a room. Sometimes, when the pretending really works, I find it much, much more moving than something on film.
Mark Haddon
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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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...and I wrote a book and that means I can do anything
Mark Haddon
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The one thing you have to do if you write a book is put yourself in someone else's shoes. The reader's shoes. You've got to entertain them.
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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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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Bore children, and they stop reading. There's no room for self-indulgence or showing off or setting the scene.
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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A lot of roles for people with disabilities are quite patronising. It's a real pity when they are just used to give dull PC kudos to a drama, or when they're wheeled on in a tokenistic way without any real involvement in the plot.
Mark Haddon
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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
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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? I read the King James Bible, as all English writers should. And when I find myself in church, I edit the hymns as I sing them.
Mark Haddon
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...and there was nothing to do except to wait and to hurt.
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.
Mark Haddon
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Lots of things are mysteries. But that doesn't mean there isn't an answer to them. It's just that scientists haven't found the answer yet.
Mark Haddon