A biography for Mark Haddonhasn’t been written yet.
“I've come to realize that most good ideas are precisely the ones you can't describe.”
“... why I like timetables, because they make sure I don't get lost in time.”
“I find people confusing.”
“No one is ever really a stranger. We cling to the belief that we share nothing with certain people. It's rubbish. We have almost everything in common with everyone.”
“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.”
“Water purling between the rocks, weed under the surface like green hair in the wind.”
“As to the number of novels I've abandoned... I shudder to think. I have thrown away five completed novels, and that's a gruesome enough figure. But not necessarily a waste of effort.”
“I was born too late for steam trains and a lazy eye meant I'd never be an astronaut.”
“The way of creating believable characters is not by conforming to a set of PC rules.”
“And this shows that sometimes people want to be stupid and they do not want to know the truth.”
“I am quite amazed how, when people earn lots of money, they think they have to spend it on things that give them access to the club constituted by the people who are in their tax bracket.”
“My book has a very simple surface, but there are layers of irony and paradox all the way through it.”
“Science and literature give me answers. And they ask me questions I will never be able to answer.”
“...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.”
“Reading is a conversation. All books talk. But a good book listens as well.”
“Many children's writers don't have children of their own.”
“If you're trying to be a successful writer, and you go into a second-hand bookshop, it's the graveyard of people whose books haven't been wanted.”
“I thought Bill Bryson's 'A Short History of Nearly Everything' was remarkable. Managing to be entertaining while still delivering all that hard science was a pretty good trick to pull off.”
“A Rough GuideBe polite at the reception desk.Not all the knives are in the museum.The waitresses know that a nice boyis 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 didat a particular time in the past.Remember, every Friday we used to gofor 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.”
“...companionship refused is worse than loneliness.”