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
people plot pages
I better make the plot good. I wanted to make it grip people on the first page and have a big turning point in the middle, as there is, and construct the whole thing like a roller coaster ride.
book kids littles
I read very, very little fiction as a kid. All the books I can remember are junior science books.
wall made work-harder
I like having my back pressed against a wall and being made to work harder so I don't embarrass myself.
dog stories forks
I knew there was a story; once you find a dog with a fork through it, you know there's a story there.
children book thinking
Children simply don't make the distinction; a book is either good or bad. And some of the books they think are good are very, very bad indeed.
kids fiction forgotten
As a kid, I didn't read a great deal of fiction, and I've forgotten most of what I did read.
children sadness childhood
Appalling things can happen to children. And even a happy childhood is filled with sadnesses.
zero math literature
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.
writing math chance
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.
running people literature
Every life is narrow. Our only escape is not to run away, but to learn to love the people we are and the world in which we find ourselves.
religious atheist hymns
I am atheist in a very religious mould. I'm always asking myself the big questions. Where did we come from? Is there a meaning to all of this? When I find myself in church, I edit the hymns as I sing them.
character thinking way
I think I've learnt that there is no character so strange that you haven't shared their experience in some small way.
car mind abnormal
I am really interested in eccentric minds. It's rather like being fascinated by how cars work. It's really boring if your car works all the time. But as soon as something happens, you get the bonnet up. If someone has an abnormal or dysfunctional state of mind, you get the bonnet up.
thinking perfect darkness
Humour and high seriousness... Perfect bedfellows, I think. Though I usually phrase it in terms of comedy and darkness. Comedy without darkness rapidly becomes trivial. And darkness without comedy rapidly becomes unbearable.