Mark Haddon

“I really like the idea of being a bit unpredictable. I'm known for being a nice, easy-going person with a straightforward exterior. So I think a bit of me wants to be sort of sly and devious.”

“I'm a writer! If you work in an office, it dampens you. It makes you fit a routine. The effect of being a writer is not dissimilar to being long-term unemployed. And everyone knows that is not good for you.”

“For me, disability is a way of getting some extremity, some kind of very difficult situation, that throws an interesting light on people.”

“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.”

“I think one of the things you have to learn if you're going to create believable characters is never to make generalizations about groups of people.”

“The way of creating believable characters is not by conforming to a set of PC rules.”