Quotes from Mark Haddon

And I think that there are so many things just in one house that it would take years to think about all of them properly.

For example, people often say "Be quiet," but they don't tell you how long to be quiet for. Or you see a sign which says KEEP OFF THE GRASS but it should say KEEP OFF THE GRASS AROUND THIS SIGN or KEEP OFF ALL THE GRASS IN THIS PARK because there is lots of grass you are allowed to walk on.

And this is why people's brains are like computers. And it's not because they are special but because they have to keep turning off for fractions of a second while the screen changes. And because there is something they can't see people think it has to be special, because people always think there is something special about what they can't see, like the dark side of the moon, or the other side of a black hole, or in the dark when they wake up at night and they're scared.

Charlar un poco es sólo ser simpático, ¿no? —Yo no sé charlar —dije.

dogs are faithful and they do not tell lies because they cannot talk.

Which was what she hated about the countryside, no distraction from the dirty messed-up workings of the heart.

Eventually we find that we no longer need silence. We no longer need solitude. We no longer even need words. We can make all our actions holy. We can cook a meal for our family and it becomes prayer. We can go for a walk in the park and it becomes prayer.

He asked whether I wanted to become an astronaut and I said I did. He said that it was very difficult to become an astronaut. I said that I knew. You had to become an officer in the air force and you had to take lots of orders and be prepared to kill other human beings, and I couldn't take orders.

quod erat demonstrandum, which is Latin for which is the thing that was going to be proved, which means thus it is proved.

And it came to Daisy out of the blue. Her mother was a human being. How rarely she saw it.

None of them were greatly interested in the election except as a national soap opera in which the closeness of the result was more exciting than the identity of the winner. Individually, they were passionate about GP fundholding, academy schools, asylum, but none of them trusted any party to keep a promise about any of these issues. Louisa struggled to believe that she could change herself, let alone the world.

I do not always do what I am told. And this is because when people tell you what to do it is usually confusing and does not make sense.

he smelled of something I do not know the name of which Father often smells of when he comes home from work.

Buen chico. Y yo dije: —Gracias por la cena —porque eso es ser educado.

Her only worry sometimes was that she didn't look different enough, that people mistook her for part of a crowd. She'd see a girl in patterned Doc Martens or with a dyed red pixie cut and wish she had the balls.

It wasn't about believing this or that, it wasn't 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.

porque cuando nos hablan del Peligro que suponen los Desconocidos en el colegio dicen que si un hombre se te acerca y te habla y te da miedo debes buscar a una señora y correr hacia ella, porque las señoras son más seguras.

Siobhan said that I should write something I would want to read myself. Mostly I read books about science and maths. I do not like proper novels. In proper novels people say things like, I am veined with iron, with silver and with streaks of common mud. I cannot contract into the firm fist which whose clench who do not depend on stimulus. What does this mean? I do not know. Nor does Father. Nor does Siobhan or Mr. Jeavons. I have asked them.

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 a Swiss Army knife if they hit me.

penso che i numeri primi siano come la vita. Sono molto logici ma non si riesce mai a scoprirne le regole, anche se si passa tutto il tempo pensarci su.

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.

Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life.

And this means 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.

Then he snored and I jumped and I could hear the blood in my ears and my heart going really fast and a pain like someone had blown up a really big balloon inside my chest. I wondered if I was going to have a heart attack.