English - Novelist | September 26, 1962 -
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.
Mark Haddon
DarknessThinkComedyPerfectHigh
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.
WorldYearLookThreeEventsTwo
I've come to realize that most good ideas are precisely the ones you can't describe.
GoodIdeasYouRealizeComeMost
Indeed, I am repeatedly astonished by the number of really good writers who understand human beings so well on paper but don't know how to deal with them in real life.
LifeGoodI AmKnowUnderstandReal
It took me a long time to come out as someone who doesn't like film. It's a bit like when people say they don't like books: you get that sharp intake of breath.
TimePeopleMeSomeoneLongYou
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.
WorkCarTimeI AmMindSomeone
Stories about mental aberration and oddity only make sense in context. Just how do people live with someone who is peculiar, gifted, strange or alien? It's odd because there's a little part of me that wants to write about exotic, strange bizarre subjects. Instead, I've rather reluctantly realised that what I write about is families.
LivePeopleMeSomeoneAlienWrite
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.
DepressionDayI AmMeMechanicGo
I like having my back pressed against a wall and being made to work harder so I don't embarrass myself.
WorkMyselfBackWallBeingAgainst
There's something rather wonderful about the fact that Oxford is a very small city that contains most of the cultural and metropolitan facilities you could want, in terms of bookshops, theatre, cinema, conversation. But it's near enough to London to get here in an hour, and it's near enough to huge open spaces without which I would go insane.
CityTheatreSmallEnoughYouWant
My best days do seem like a distillation of all that was best about school. Write a story! Paint a picture! Write a poem! Make a print!
BestSchoolStoryPictureWrite
One of the freedoms you get if you earn a lot of money from a book is to throw away what you want. And if you throw a lot away, the good stuff always comes back; nothing is lost.
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