Mark Haddon
Mark Haddon
Mark Haddonis an English novelist, best known for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. He won the Whitbread Award, Guardian Prize, and a Commonwealth Writers Prize for his work...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth26 September 1962
children book risk
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.
thinking perspective people
... 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.
cities oxford space
There's something rather wonderful about the fact that Oxford is a very small city that contains most of the cultural and metropolitan facilities you could want, in terms of bookshops, theatre, cinema, conversation. But it's near enough to London to get here in an hour, and it's near enough to huge open spaces without which I would go insane.
memories swimming past
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.
people plot pages
I better make the plot good. I wanted to make it grip people on the first page and have a big turning point in the middle, as there is, and construct the whole thing like a roller coaster ride.
book kids littles
I read very, very little fiction as a kid. All the books I can remember are junior science books.
wall made work-harder
I like having my back pressed against a wall and being made to work harder so I don't embarrass myself.
dog stories forks
I knew there was a story; once you find a dog with a fork through it, you know there's a story there.
children book thinking
Children simply don't make the distinction; a book is either good or bad. And some of the books they think are good are very, very bad indeed.
kids fiction forgotten
As a kid, I didn't read a great deal of fiction, and I've forgotten most of what I did read.
children sadness childhood
Appalling things can happen to children. And even a happy childhood is filled with sadnesses.
zero math literature
With English literature, if you do a bit of shonky spelling, no one dies, but if you're half-way through a maths calculation and you stick in an extra zero, everything just crashes into the ravine.
writing math chance
If you enjoy math and you write novels, it's very rare that you'll get a chance to put your math into a novel. I leapt at the chance.
running people literature
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.