Quotes from Mark Haddon

He no longer believes in the gods. He has heard too many contradictory stories on his travels. Better, surely, that everyone is deluded than that revelation has been so parsimoniously handed out. If he has a religion it is that of grass and rivers, of mountains and of skies that continue beyond the ends even of our longest journeys.

It's bloody hard telling the truth all the time.

He can see now that this is a delusion from which you suffer when the path chosen for you is a profitable one. When the path veers into darker, more difficult terrain you finally understand that what you thought was weakness in others is not weakness at all; it is simply the structure of the world.

But what is the answer? Armed guards? Depending on yet more men seems to her like part of the problem. Better to rely on their own invisibility. A memory of that deer standing on the path then sprinting away. The sisterhood of idiot creatures, the wisdom that comes with knowing you could be prey.

He has never believed in the Fates. You shape your own life, you see the available futures laid out before you and you choose the most advantageous. He can see now that this is a delusion from which you suffer when the path chosen for you is a profitable one. When the path veers into darker, more difficult terrain you finally understand that what you thought was weakness in others is not weakness at all; it is simply the structure of the world.

she keeps her distance by pretending to be more foreign and less intelligent that she is, misusing words and faking bafflement at quirky native customs, and is both insulted and relieved that none of them see through the blatant subterfuge.

The Hound of the Baskervilles because it is a detective story which means that there are clues and Red Herrings.

Mama is thirty-seven weeks pregnant.

A loro piace stare da soli e li incontro molto raramente, perché sono come gli okapi nella giungla del Congo, una specie di antilope, timidissima e rara. E posso andare ovunque nel mondo e so che nessuno mi rivolgerà la parola o mi toccherà o mi farà domande.

Perhaps everyone possessed a darker self kept at bay by circumstance.

4. There is an old plastic bag from Asda in the hedge, and a squashed Coca-Cola can with a snail on it, and a long piece of orange string.

Fischhoff calls this phenomenon creeping determinism -- the sense that grows on us, in retrospect, that what has happened was actually inevitable -- and the chief effect of creeping determinism, he points out, is that it turns unexpected events into expected events. As he writes, The occurrence of an event increases its reconstructed probability and makes it less surprising than it would have been had the original probability been remembered.

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.

People say that you always have to tell the truth. But they do not mean this because you are not allowed to tell old people that they are old and you are not allowed to tell people if they smell funny or if a grown-up has made a fart. And you are not allowed to say "I don't like you" unless that person has been horrible to you.

Nemám rád normální romány. V normálních románech lidi Ã…â"¢íkají vÄ›ci jako: "Jsem protkána železem, stÃ…â"¢íbrem a žilkami usazenin. Nedokážu se sevÃ…â"¢ít v tvrdou pÄ›st, již zatínají ti, kteÃ…â"¢í jsou nezávislí." Co to znamená? Nevím. Neví to ani táta. Ani Siobhan, ani pan Jeavons. Ptal jsem se jich.

Prvo?ísla jsou to, co zbyde, když odstraníte vÅ¡echna pravidla. Já myslím, že prvo?ísla jsou jako život. Jsou velmi logická, ale pravidla pro nÄ› nevymyslíte, ani kdybyste nad nimi strávili vÅ¡echen ?as.

Lidi napÃ…â"¢íklad ?asto Ã…â"¢eknou "Bu? zticha," neÃ…â"¢eknou vám ale, jak dlouho máte být zticha.

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 no one runs away.

Leer es fundamentalmente un síntoma. De una imaginación saludable, de nuestro interés en este y otros mundos, de nuestra capacidad para estar callados e inmóviles, también para soñar despiertos

OdeÅ¡el jsem nahoru a sedÄ›l u sebe v pokoji a díval se, jak na ulici leje. Lilo tak straÅ¡nÄ›, že to vypadalo jako bílé jiskry (a tohle je pÃ…â"¢irovnání, ne metafora).

A možná je leh?í žít sám a starat se jen o nÄ›jakýho pitomýho voÃ…â"¢íÅ¡ka, než žít spole?nÄ› s jinými lidmi.

But you reached a stage where you realized it was a waste of energy trying to change your parents' minds about anything, ever.

Loving someone means taking the risk that they might fuck up your nicely ordered little life. And you don't want to fuck up your nicely ordered little life, do you?

Maybe the answers weren't important. Maybe it was the asking which mattered. Not taking anything for granted. Maybe that's what stopped you growing old.