If one book's done this well, you want to write another one that does just as well. There's that horror of the second novel that doesn't match up. Mark Haddon
Jane Austen was writing about boring people with desperately limited lives. We forget this because we've seen too many of her books on screen. Mark Haddon
Most adults, unlike most children, understand the difference between a book that will hold them spellbound for a rainy Sunday afternoon and a book that will put them in touch with a part of themselves they didn't even know existed. Mark Haddon
No one wants to know how clever you are. They don't want an insight into your mind, thrilling as it might be. They want an insight into their own. Mark Haddon
The one thing you have to do if you write a book is put yourself in someone else's shoes. The reader's shoes. You've got to entertain them. Mark Haddon
There's something with the physical size of America... American writers can write about America and it can still feel like a foreign country. Mark Haddon
When I was writing for children, I was writing genre fiction. It was like making a good chair. It needed four legs of the same length, it had to be the right height and it had to be comfortable. Mark Haddon
Writing for children is bloody difficult; books for children are as complex as their adult counterparts, and they should therefore be accorded the same respect. Mark Haddon
