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
running writing gay
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 that no one runs away.
imagination care use
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.
character creating way
The way of creating believable characters is not by conforming to a set of PC rules.
artist dinner rest-of-your-life
Show me the artist anywhere who's had an utterly stable mental life, and I'll buy you hot dinners for the rest of your life.
clever mind literature
No one wants to know how clever you are. They don't want an insight into your mind, thrilling as it might be. They want an insight into their own.
character thinking people
I think one of the things you have to learn if you're going to create believable characters is never to make generalizations about groups of people.
book taken darkness
From a good book, I want to be taken to the very edge. I want a glimpse into that outer darkness.
moving kids theatre
What I love about the theatre is that it's always metaphorical. It's like going back to being a kid again, and we're all pretending in a room. Sometimes, when the pretending really works, I find it much, much more moving than something on film.
fall people half
Things can be funny when people are uneasy. It softens them up and stops them falling asleep on the sofa. I like those moments where people half-smile and half-wince.
book writing done
If one book's done this well, you want to write another one that does just as well. There's that horror of the second novel that doesn't match up.
book kids imperfection
If kids like a picture book, they're going to read it at least 50 times. Read anything that often, and even minor imperfections start to feel like gravel in the bed.
stars fall night
..because when we look up into the sky at night there will be no darkness, just the blazing light of billions and billions of stars, all falling.
writing today stories
Well, we're meant to be writing stories today,
mean smell people
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.