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Mark Haddon Quotes | Quotes said by Mark Haddon

  • Mark Haddon Quote #1

    ... 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 Quote #2

    ... why I like timetables, because they make sure I don't get lost in time.

  • Mark Haddon Quote #3

    ...because I went to London on my own, and because I went to 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 Quote #4

    ...companionship refused is worse than loneliness.

  • Mark Haddon Quote #5

    ...most people are almost blind and they don’t see most things and there is lots of spare capacity in their heads and it is filled with things which aren’t connected and are silly, like, “I’m worried that I might have left the gas cooker on.

  • Mark Haddon Quote #6

    ...people who believe in God think God has put human beings on earth because they think human beings are the best animal, but human beings are just an animal and they will evolve into another animal, and that animal will be cleverer and it will put human beings into a zoo, like we put chimpanzees and gorillas into a zoo. Or human beings will all catch a disease and die out or they will make too much pollution and kill themselves, and then there will only be insects in the world and they will be the best animal.

  • Mark Haddon Quote #7

    Carcharadon carcharias. Six thousand
    pounds of muscle powering a hoop
    of butcher's knives. The only animal
    that ate its weaker siblings in the womb.
    Immune from cancer. Constantly awake.

  • Mark Haddon Quote #8

    A Rough Guide

    Be polite at the reception desk.
    Not all the knives are in the museum.
    The waitresses know that a nice boy
    is formed in the same way as a deckchair.
    Pay for the beer and send flowers.
    Introduce yourself as Richard.
    Do not refer to what somebody did
    at a particular time in the past.
    Remember, every Friday we used to go
    for a walk. I walked. You walked.
    Everything in the past is irregular.
    This steak is very good. Sit down.
    There is no wine, but there is ice cream.
    Eat slowly. I have many matches.

  • Mark Haddon Quote #9

    A white lie is not a lie at all. It is where you tell the truth but you do not tell all of the truth. This means that everything you say is a white lie because when someone says, for example, What do you want to do today? you say, I want to do painting with Mrs. Peters, but you don't say, I want to have my lunch and I want to go to the toilet and I want to go home after school and I want to play with Toby and I want to have my supper

  • Mark Haddon Quote #10

    After an Indian meal they went back to Jamie's flat and Tony did at least two things to him on the sofa that no one had ever done to him before then came back and them again the following evening, and suddenly life became very good indeed.

  • Mark Haddon Quote #11

    All the other children at my school are stupid. Except I'm not meant to call them stupid, even though this is what they are.

  • Mark Haddon Quote #12

    Also I didn't habe 20/20 vision whch you needed to be a pilot. But I said you could still want something that is very unlikely to happen.

  • Mark Haddon Quote #13

    And all I could see would be stars. And stars are the places where the molecules that life is made of were constructed billions of years ago. For example, all the iron in your blood which stops you from being anemic was made in a star.

  • Mark Haddon Quote #14

    And Father said, Christopher, do you understand that I love you?
    And I said Yes, because loving someone is helping them when they get into trouble, and looking after them, and telling them the truth, and Father looks after me when I get into trouble, like coming to the police station, and he looks after me by cooking meals for me, and he always tells me the truth, which means that he loves me.

  • Mark Haddon Quote #15

    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 Quote #16

    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 Quote #17

    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 Quote #18

    And Siobhan says people go on holidays to see new things and relax, but it wouldn’t make me relaxed and you can see new things by looking at earth under a microscope or drawing the shape of the solid made when 3 circular rods of equal thickness intersect at right angles. And I think that there are so many things just in one house that it would take years to think about all of them properly. And also, a thing is interesting because of thinking about it and not because of it being new.

  • Mark Haddon Quote #19

    And that is why a dog can go to the vet and have a really big operation and have metal pins sticking out of its leg but if it sees a cat it forgets that it has pins sticking out of its leg and chases after the cat. But when a person has an operation it has a picture in its head of the hurt carrying on for months and months. And it has a picture of all the stitches in its leg and the broken bone and the pins and even if it sees a bus it has to catch it doesn't run because it has a picture in its head of the bones crunching together and the stitches breaking and even more pain.

  • Mark Haddon Quote #20

    And then a man stood next to the shelf and said, Come and look at this, Barry. They've got, like, a train elf.
    And another man came and stood net to him and said, Well, we have both been drinking.
    And the first man said, Perhaps we should feed him some nuts.
    And the second man said,You're the one who's bloody nuts.
    And the first one said, Come on, shift it, you daft cunt. I need more bers before I sober up.

  • Mark Haddon Quote #21

    And this shows that sometimes people want to be stupid and they do not want to know the truth.

  • Mark Haddon Quote #22

    And what he meant was that maths wasn't like life because in life there are no straightforward answers in the end

  • Mark Haddon Quote #23

    And when I am in a new place, because I see everything, it is like when a computer is doing too many things at the same time and the central processor unit is blocked up and there isn't any space left to think about other things. And when I am in a new place and there are lots of people there it is even harder because people are not like cows and flowers and grass and they can talk to you and do things that you don't expect, so you have to notice everything that is in the place, and also you have to notice things that might happen as well. And sometimes when I am in a new place and there are lots of people there it is like a computer crashing and I have to close my eyes and put my hands over my ears and groan, which is like pressing CTRL + ALT + DEL and shutting down programs and turning the computer off and rebooting so that I can remember what I am doing and where I am meant to be going.

  • Mark Haddon Quote #24

    And when you look at the sky you know you are looking at stars which are hundreds and thousands of light-years away from you. And some of the stars don’t even exist anymore because their light has taken so long to get to us that they are already dead, or they have exploded and collapsed into red dwarfs. And that makes you seem very small, and if you have difficult things in you life it is nice to think that they are what is called negligible, which means they are so small you don’t have to take them into account when you are calculating something.

  • Mark Haddon Quote #25

    Appalling things can happen to children. And even a happy childhood is filled with sadnesses. Is there any other period in your life when you hate your best friend on Monday and love them again on Tuesday? But at eight, 10, 12, you don't realise you're going to die. There is always the possibility of escape. There is always somewhere else and far away, a fact I had never really appreciated until I read Gitta Sereny's profoundly unsettling Cries Unheard about child-killer Mary Bell.

    At 20, 25, 30, we begin to realise that the possibilities of escape are getting fewer. We begin to picture a time when there will no longer be somewhere else and far away. We have jobs, children, partners, debts, responsibilities. And if many of these things enrich our lives immeasurably, those shrinking limits are something we all have to come to terms with.

    This, I think, is the part of us to which literary fiction speaks.

  • Mark Haddon Quote #26

    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 Quote #27

    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 Quote #28

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

  • Mark Haddon Quote #29

    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 Quote #30

    He said that it was very difficult to become an astronaut. I said that I knew. You had to become an officer in the air force and you had to take lots of orders and be prepared to kill other human beings, and I couldn't take orders. Also I didn't have 20/20 vision, which you needed to be a pilot.

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