Maybe it was the heart which punished one with such exquisite accuracy.

— Mark Haddon

Melissa popped open the flattery little Roaring tin. Pencils, putty rubber, scalpel. She sharpened a 3B, letting the curly shavings fall into the wicker bin, then paused for a few seconds, finding a little place of stillness before starting to draw the flowers. Art didn't count at school because it didn't get you into law or banking or medicine. It was just a fluffy thing stuck to the side of Design and Technology, a free A level for kids who could do it, like a second language, but she loved charcoal and perfect gouache, she loved rolling sticky black ink on to a lino plate and heaving on the big black arm of the Cope press, the quiet and those big white walls.

— Mark Haddon

MiaowConsider me. I sit here like Tiberius, inscrutable and grand. I will let "I dare not"wait upon "I would"and bear the tangling your small guitar because you are my lowland foster me with milk. Why wet my paw? Just keep me in a bag and no one knows the truth. I am familiar with witches and stand a better chance in hell than you for I can dance on hot bricks, leap your height and land on all fours. I am the servant of the Living God. I worship in my way. Look into these slit green stone sand follow your reflected lights into the dark. Michel, Due de Montaigne, knew. You don't play with me. I play with you.

— Mark Haddon

...most people are almost blind, and they don’t see most things and there is lots of spare capacity in their heads, and it is filled with things which aren’t connected and are silly, like, “I’m worried that I might have left the gas cooker on.

— Mark Haddon

No more things should be presumed to exist than are absolutely necessary

— Mark Haddon

On the fifth day, which was a Sunday, it rained very hard. I like it when it rains hard. It sounds like white noise everywhere, which is like silence but not empty.

— Mark Haddon

People believe in God because the world is very complicated, and they think it is very unlikely that anything as complicated as a flying squirrel or the human eye or a brain could happen by chance.

— Mark Haddon

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.

— Mark Haddon

People stick hearts on Valentine's cards and get married in white dresses and give each other flowers. They think love is every-thing going right. That's not love. That's self-indulgence. That's good luck. Love is when you walk into the burning building. Love is when the person who means most to you in the world is breathing through a mask and pissing in a bag. Love is when they no longer know your name.

— Mark Haddon

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.

— Mark Haddon