And when you look at the sky you know you are looking at stars which are hundreds and thousands of light-years away from you. And some of the stars donโt even exist anymore because their light has taken so long to get to us that they are already dead, or they have exploded and collapsed into red dwarfs. And that makes you seem very small, and if you have difficult things in you life it is nice to think that they are what is called negligible, which means they are so small you donโt have to take them into account when you are calculating something.
Mark HaddonEveryone has learning difficulties, because learning to speak French or understanding relativity is difficult.
Mark HaddonYou make a film you feel is as real as possible and hope people react as though it were real.
Mark HaddonI 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.
Mark HaddonHe was asking too many questions and he was asking them too quickly. They were stacking up in my head like loaves in the factory where Uncle Terry works. The factory is a bakery and he operates the slicing machines. And sometimes a slicer is not working fast enough but the bread keeps coming and there is a blockage. I sometimes think of my mind as a machine, but not always as a bread-slicing machine. It makes it easier to explain to other people what is going on inside it.
Mark Haddon