Mark Haddon

“And outside the window was like a map, except it was in 3 dimensions and it was life-size because it was the thing it was a map of.”

“I cared about dogs because they were faithful and honest, and some dogs were cleverer and more interesting than some people.”

“Everything seemed suspended, in some kind of balance. Obviously someone would come along and fuck it up, because that's what other people did.”

“The secret of contentment lay in ignoring many things completely.”

“One person looks around and sees a universe created by a god who watches over its long unfurling, marking the fall of sparrows and listening to the prayers of his finest creation. Another person believes that life, in all its baroque complexity, is a chemical aberration that will briefly decorate the surface of a ball of rock spinning somewhere among a billion galaxies. And the two of them could talk for hours and find no great difference between one another, for neither set of beliefs make us kinder or wiser.”

“That was what it meant, didn’t it. Being good. You didn’t have to sink wells in Burkina Faso. You didn’t have to give away your coffee table. You just had to see things from other people’s point of view. Remember they were human.”

“I like it when it rains hard. It sounds like white noise everywhere, which is like silence but not empty.”

“Ich weinte, weil ich keine Schuhe hatte, bis ich einen traf, der keine Füße hatte.”

“Wie ist das jetzt mit der Religion bei dir? Es war nicht Neid. Eher eine Art zoologische Faszination.”

“Vergeben und vergessen. Langsam verstand sie, was das hieß. Man konnte nicht vergessen, bevor nicht jemand anderes einem vergab.”

“Glauben ist das Vertrauen ins Unmögliche.”

“Es ging darum, die nötige Stärke zu finden, um das Unwohlsein zu ertragen, das es mit sich brachte, auf dieser Welt zu sein.”

“And it was strange because he was calling, "Christopher. . . ? Christopher. . . ?" and I could see my name written out as he was saying it. Often I can see what someone is saying written out like it is being printed on a computer screen, especially if they are in another room. But this was not on a computer screen. I could see it written really large, like it was on a big advert on the side of a bus. And it was in my mother's handwriting”

“Also I didn't have 20/20 vision which you needed to be a pilot. But I said you could still want something that is very unlikely to happen.”

“It wasn't about believing this or that, it wasn't even about good and evil and right and wrong, it was about finding the strength to bear the discomfort that came with being in the world.”

“One person looks around and see a universe created by a God who watches over its long unfurling, marking the fall of sparrows and listening to the prayers of his finest creation. Another person believes that life, in all its baroque complexity, is a chemical aberration that will briefly decorate the surface of a ball of rock spinning somewhere among a billion galaxies. And the two of them could talk for hours and find no greater difference between each other, for neither set of beliefs makes us kinder or wiser.William the Bastard forcing Harold to swear over the bones of Saint Jerome, the Church of Rome rent asunder by the King's Great Matter, the twin towers folding into smoke. Religion fueling the turns and reverses of human history, or so it seems, but twist them all to catch a different light and those same passionate beliefs seem no more than banners thrown up to hide the usual engines of greed and fear. And in our single lives? Those smaller turns and reverses? Is it religion which trammels and frees, which gives or withholds hope? Or are these, too, those old base motives dressed up for a Sunday morning? Are they reasons or excuses?”

“...I wanted to go to sleep so that I wouldn't have to think because the only thing I could think was how much it hurt because there was no room for anything else in my head, but I couldn't go to sleep and I just had to sit there and there was nothing to do except to wait and to hurt.”

“Family, that slippery word, a star to every wandering bark, and everyone sailing under a different sky.”

“...because I went to London on my own, and because I went to solved the mystery of Who Killed Wellington? and I found my mother and I was brave and I wrote a book and that means I can do anything.”

“He had never spoken to Uncle Richard, but he knew that he was a radiologist who put tubes into people's groins and pushed them up into their brains to clear blockages like chimney sweeps did and this was a glorious idea.”

“porque cuando nos hablan del Peligro que suponen los Desconocidos en el colegio dicen que si un hombre se te acerca y te habla y te da miedo debes buscar a una señora y correr hacia ella, porque las señoras son más seguras.”

“—Buen chico.Y yo dije:—Gracias por la cena —porque eso es ser educado.”

“How do you remember this stuff? But why had she forgotten? That was the real question.”

“You could ask for hugs if you were feeling sad or you'd hurt yourself, but when it happened spontaneously it made you feel warm inside.”

“I think she cared more for that bloody dog than for me, for us. And maybe that's not so stupid, looking back... maybe it is easier living on your own looking after some stupid mutt than sharing your life with other actual human beings.”

“And this shows that sometimes people want to be stupid and they do not want to know the truth.”

“—Bueno, ¿cómo te va, capitán?Y yo dije:—Me va muy bien, gracias —que es lo que se supone que tienes que decir.”

“Charlar un poco es sólo ser simpático, ¿no?—Yo no sé charlar —dije.”

“La gente dice que siempre hay que decir la verdad. Pero no lo dicen en serio porque no se te permite decirle a los viejos que son viejos y no se te permite decirle a la gente que huele raro o a un adulto que se ha tirado un pedo.”

“Los niños de mi colegio son estúpidos. Pero se supone que no he de llamarlos estúpidos, ni siquiera aunque sea eso lo que son. Se supone que he de decir que tienen dificultades de aprendizaje o que tienen necesidades especiales.”

“Maybe it wasn't God after all, maybe it was the heart which punished one with such exquisite accuracy.”

“A white lie is not a lie at all. It is where you tell the truth but you do not tell all of the truth. This means that everything you say is a white lie because when someone says, for example, "What do you want to do today?" you say, "I want to do painting with Mrs. Peters," but you don't say, "I want to have my lunch and I want to go to the toilet and I want to go home after school and I want to play with Toby and I want to have my supper”

“How pleased we are to have our eyes opened but how easily we close them again.”

“Places remained and time flowed through them like wind through the grass. Right now. This was the future turning into the past. One thing becoming another. Like a flame on the end of a match. Wood turning into smoke. If only we could burn brighter. A barn roaring in the night.”

“And it means that sometimes thing are so complicated that it is impossible to predict what they are going to do next, but they are only obeying really simple rules.”

“ Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. No more things should be presumed to exist than are absolutely necessary. ”

“The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.”

“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.”

“I do not like strangers because I do not like people I have never met before. They are hard to understand.”

“He said that it was very difficult to become an astronaut. I said that I knew. You had to become an officer in the air force and you had to take lots of orders and be prepared to kill other human beings, and I couldn't take orders. Also I didn't have 20/20 vision, which you needed to be a pilot.”

“But I don't feel sad about it. Because Mother is dead. And because Mr. Shears isn't around anymore. So I would be feeling sad about something that isn't real and doesn't exist. And that would be stupid.”

“People think computers are different from people because they don't have minds, even though, in the Turing test, computers can have conversations with people about the weather and wine and what Italy is like, and they can even tell jokes.”

“I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them”

“Prime numbers are useful for writing codes and in America they are classed as Military Material and if you find one over 100 digits you have to tell the CIA and they buy it off you for $10,000. But it would not be a very good way of making a living.”

“And this shows that people want to be stupid and they do not want to know the truth. And it shows that something called Occam's razor is true. And Occam's razor is not a razor that men shave with but a Law, and it says:Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.Which is Latin and it means:No more things should be presumed to exist than are absolutely necessary. Which means that a murder victim is usually killed by someone known to them and fairies are made out of paper and you can't talk to someone who is dead.”

“He had dreadlocks, which is what some black people have, but he was white, and dreadlocks is when you never wash your hair and it looks like old rope.”

“I liked maths because it meant solving problems, and these problems were difficult and interesting but there was always a straightforward answer at the end”

“In life, you have to take lots of decisions and if you don't take decisions you would never do anything because you would spend all your time choosing between things you could do.”

“Lots of things are mystries. But that doesn't mean there isn't an answer to them. It's just that scientists haven't found the answer yet.”

“Reading is a conversation. All books talk. But a good book listens as well.”