Quotes from Mark Haddon

She has grown up as a woman. She has been taught to flatter, to please, to depend, to give way, to make herself small and quiet. She has been told to be soft so that men will always have a means by which they can hurt and control her, that ring through the nose which men call femininity. But she has silently refused to accept these lessons.

Just think about today. Think about things that have happened. Especially about good things that have happened.

And now if I don't know what someone is saying I ask them what they mean or I walk away.

He does not understand yet that sometimes the monster is other people, sometimes the monster squats unseen inside one's own heart, and sometimes the monster is the brute fact of time itself.

I didn't reply to this either because Mrs. Alexander was doing what is called chatting, where people say things to each other which aren't questions and answers and aren't connected.

You always know what a dog is thinking. It has four moods. Happy, sad, cross and concentrating. Also, dogs are faithful and they do not tell lies because they cannot talk.

O los seres humanos cogerán todos una enfermedad y se extinguirán o producirán demasiada contaminación y se matarán a ellos mismos, y entonces sólo habrá insectos en el mundo y ellos serán el mejor animal.

and when i try and make a picture of the phrase in my head it just confuses me because an apple in someone's eye doesn't have anything to do with liking someone a lot and it just makes you forget what the person was talking about

Y la gente que cree en Dios piensa que Dios ha puesto seres humanos en la Tierra porque piensa que los seres humanos son el mejor animal, pero los seres humanos sólo son un animal y evolucionarán hasta ser otro animal, y ese animal será más listo y meterá a los seres humanos en un zoo, como nosotros metemos a los chimpancés y a los gorilas en el zoo.

But I don't take any notice because I don't listen to what other people say and only sticks and stones can break my bones and I have my Swiss Army knife if they hit me and if I kill them it will be self-defense and I won't go to prison.

And it's best if you know a good thing is going to happen, like an eclipse or getting a microscope for Christmas. And it's bad if you know a bad thing is going to happen, like having a filling or going to France. But I think it is worst if you don't know whether it is a good thing or a bad thing which is going to happen.

Reading is a conversation. All books talk. But a good book listens as well

Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. Which is Latin and it means No more things should be presumed to exist than are absolutely necessary.

Prime numbers are useful for writing codes and in America they are classed as Military Material and if you find one over 100 digits long you have to tell the CIA and they buy it off you for $10,000. But it would not be a very good way of making a living. 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 all your time thinking about them.

Una cosa es interesante porque pensamos en ella, no porque sea nueva.

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 stops you being anaemic, was made in a star.

We're [Christopher & Ed] not that different, me and you. [said Ed]

I do not want my name to mean a story about being kind and helpful. I want my name to mean me.

And also, a thing is interesting because of thinking about it and not because of being new.

And this mean time is a mystery, and not even a thing, and no one has solved the puzzle of what time is, exactly. And so if you get lost in time it is like being lost in a desert, except that you can't see the desert because it is not a thing. And this is why I like timetables, because they make sure you don't get lost in time.

But in life you have to take lots of decisions and if you don't take decisions you would never do anything because you would spend all your time choosing between things you could do. So it is good to have a reason why you hate some things and you like others.

a veces las cosas son tan complicadas que es imposible predecir qué va a pasar a continuación, pero en realidad obedecen a unas reglas muy sencillas. Y eso significa que, a veces, una población entera de ranas, o de gusanos, o de gente, puede morir sin razón alguna, sólo porque así es como funcionan los números.

meterme en líos

Life is a cowpat sandwich Jimbo.' he sighed 'with a very thin bread and lots of filling.