“I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them”
Author detail
Mark Haddon (born 26 September 1962) is an English novelist, best known for *The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Tim*e (2003). He won the Whitbread Award, the Dolly Gray Children's Literature Award, the Guardian Prize, and a Commonwealth Writers' Prize for his work.
Quotes
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“I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them”
“Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent...”
“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 lig...”
“And 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 anoth...”
“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 f...”
“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.”
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“I think people believe in heaven because they don't like the idea of dying, because they want to carry on living and they don't like the idea that other people will move into their house and...”
“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...”
“It wasn't about believing this or that, it wasn't even about good and evil and right and wrong, it was about finding the strength to bear the discomfort that came with being in the world.”
“I think she cared more for that bloody dog than for me, for us. And maybe that's not so stupid, looking back... maybe it is easier living on your own looking after some stupid mutt than shar...”
“... why I like timetables, because they make sure I don't get lost in time.”
“Lots of things are mystries. But that doesn't mean there isn't an answer to them. It's just that scientists haven't found the answer yet.”
“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 examples, all the iron in your blood, which...”
“Stories about mental aberration and oddity only make sense in context. Just how do people live with someone who is peculiar, gifted, strange or alien? It's odd because there's a little part...”
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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.”
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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.”
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“If you came from Mars and tried to analyse British or American society through novels, you'd think our society was preponderantly full of middle-aged, slightly alcoholic, middle-class, intel...”
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“Jane Austen was writing about boring people with desperately limited lives. We forget this because we've seen too many of her books on screen.”
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“Humour and high seriousness... Perfect bedfellows, I think. Though I usually phrase it in terms of comedy and darkness. Comedy without darkness rapidly becomes trivial. And darkness without...”
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“B is for bestseller.”
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