The one thing you have to do if you write a book is put yourself in someone else’s shoes. The reader’s shoes. You’ve got to entertain them. Mark Haddon Read Quote
Fiction that responds to recent world events is a hostage to fortune, because all momentous events look very different a year, two years, three years later. Mark Haddon Read Quote
I like having my back pressed against a wall and being made to work harder so I don’t embarrass myself. Mark Haddon Read Quote
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. Mark Haddon Read Quote
Young readers have to be entertained. No child reads fiction because they think it’s going to make them a better person. Mark Haddon Read Quote
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. Mark Haddon Read Quote
Writing for children is bloody difficult; books for children are as complex as their adult counterparts, and they should therefore be accorded the same respect. Mark Haddon Read Quote
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. Mark Haddon Read Quote
I suffer depression only in the sense that I am a writer. We don’t have proper jobs to go to. We are on our own all day. Show me a writer who doesn’t get depressed: who has a completely stable mood. They’d be a garage mechanic or something. Mark Haddon Read Quote
I thought Bill Bryson’s ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything’ was remarkable. Managing to be entertaining while still delivering all that hard science was a pretty good trick to pull off. Mark Haddon Read Quote
