As a teenager, I was always this strange mixture of kind of vice-captain of the rugby team and sensitive artist type the rest of the time. I was sent away to this public school in the middle of nowhere, and I think we managed to completely miss out on normal youth culture.
Mark HaddonMadness doesn't happen to someone alone. Very few people have experiences that are theirs alone.
Mark HaddonBooks are like people. Some look deceptively attractive from a distance, some deceptively unappealing; some are easy company, some demand hard work that isnโt guaranteed to pay off. Some become friends and say friends for life. Some change in our absence - or perhaps it is we who change in theirs - and we meet up again only to find that we donโt get along any more.
Mark HaddonSiobhan said that when you are writing a book you have to include some descriptions of things. I said that I could take photographs and put them in the book. But she said the idea of a book was to describe things using words so that people could read them and make a picture in their own head.
Mark Haddon