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 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.
religious atheist hymns
I am atheist in a very religious mould. I'm always asking myself the big questions. Where did we come from? Is there a meaning to all of this? When I find myself in church, I edit the hymns as I sing them.
book thinking people
I think good books have to make a few people angry.
character thinking way
I think I've learnt that there is no character so strange that you haven't shared their experience in some small way.
car mind abnormal
I am really interested in eccentric minds. It's rather like being fascinated by how cars work. It's really boring if your car works all the time. But as soon as something happens, you get the bonnet up. If someone has an abnormal or dysfunctional state of mind, you get the bonnet up.
thinking perfect darkness
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 comedy rapidly becomes unbearable.
thinking numbers effort
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.
running writing gay
I don't remember deciding to become a writer. You decide to become a dentist or a postman. For me, writing is like being gay. You finally admit that this is who you are, you come out and hope that no one runs away.
imagination care use
Use your imagination, and you'll see that even the most narrow, humdrum lives are infinite in scope if you examine them with enough care.
character creating way
The way of creating believable characters is not by conforming to a set of PC rules.
artist dinner rest-of-your-life
Show me the artist anywhere who's had an utterly stable mental life, and I'll buy you hot dinners for the rest of your life.