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
prayer believe fall
One person looks around and sees a universe created by a god who watches over its long unfurling, marking the fall of sparrows and listening to the prayers of his finest creation. Another person believes that life, in all its baroque complexity, is a chemical aberration that will briefly decorate the surface of a ball of rock spinning somewhere among a billion galaxies. And the two of them could talk for hours and find no great difference between one another, for neither set of beliefs make us kinder or wiser.
zoos believe thinking
...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 another animal, and that animal will be cleverer and it will put human beings into a zoo, like we put chimpanzees and gorillas into a zoo. Or human beings will all catch a disease and die out or they will make too much pollution and kill themselves, and then there will only be insects in the world and they will be the best animal.
believe moving thinking
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 put their things into the rubbish.
believe evil world
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.
ask english-novelist questions science
Science and literature give me answers. And they ask me questions I will never be able to answer.
I've always really enjoyed writing different things because I get bored very easily.
best days paint seem
My best days do seem like a distillation of all that was best about school. Write a story! Paint a picture! Write a poem! Make a print!
logical numbers prime rules spend thinking time work
I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spend all your time thinking about them
access amazed club earn lots money people quite
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.
earn freedoms good money stuff throw
One of the freedoms you get if you earn a lot of money from a book is to throw away what you want. And if you throw a lot away, the good stuff always comes back; nothing is lost.
bit intake people time took
It took me a long time to come out as someone who doesn't like film. It's a bit like when people say they don't like books: you get that sharp intake of breath.
kids minor picture
If kids like a picture book, they're going to read it at least 50 times, and their parents are going to have to read it with them. Read anything that often, and even minor imperfections start to feel like gravel in the bed.
analyse british came divorced families full men slightly society tried whom
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, intellectual men, most of whom are divorced from their families and have nothing to do with children.
capacity extent extreme obviously people rather
Obviously I have a capacity for feeling extreme anxiety, and there are people out there who don't. I'm to some extent rather jealous of them.