Mark Haddon quote: "As to the number of novels I've abandoned... I shudder to think. I have thrown away five completed novels, and that's a gruesome enough figure. But not necessarily a waste of effort."

I am quite amazed how, when people earn lots of money, they think they have to spend it on things th...
MARK HADDON

A lie is when you say something happened which didn't happen. But there is only ever one thing which...
MARK HADDON

There's something with the physical size of America... American writers can write about America ...
MARK HADDON

Writing for children is bloody difficult; books for children are as complex as their adult counterpa...
MARK HADDON

I like poetry when I don't quite understand why I like it. Poetry isn't just a question of w...
MARK HADDON

There was a time in my life when I was going in and out of houses that were extraordinarily differen...
MARK HADDON

Use your imagination, and you'll see that even the most narrow, humdrum lives are infinite in sc...
MARK HADDON

The way of creating believable characters is not by conforming to a set of PC rules.
MARK HADDON

Appalling things can happen to children. And even a happy childhood is filled with sadnesses.
MARK HADDON

From a good book, I want to be taken to the very edge. I want a glimpse into that outer darkness.
MARK HADDON

If kids like a picture book, they're going to read it at least 50 times, and their parents are g...
MARK HADDON

I better make the plot good. I wanted to make it grip people on the first page and have a big turnin...
MARK HADDON

Most adults, unlike most children, understand the difference between a book that will hold them spel...
MARK HADDON

I have very fond memories of swimming in Walden Pond when we lived in Boston. You'd swim past a ...
MARK HADDON

No one wants to know how clever you are. They don't want an insight into your mind, thrilling as...
MARK HADDON

I don't remember deciding to become a writer. You decide to become a dentist or a postman. For m...
MARK HADDON

Obviously I have a capacity for feeling extreme anxiety, and there are people out there who don'...
MARK HADDON

No one is ever really a stranger. We cling to the belief that we share nothing with certain people. ...
MARK HADDON

My book has a very simple surface, but there are layers of irony and paradox all the way through it.
MARK HADDON

With English literature, if you do a bit of shonky spelling, no one dies, but if you're half-way...
MARK HADDON

There's something rather wonderful about the fact that Oxford is a very small city that contains...
MARK HADDON

I suffer depression only in the sense that I am a writer. We don't have proper jobs to go to. We...
MARK HADDON

I really like the idea of being a bit unpredictable. I'm known for being a nice, easy-going pers...
MARK HADDON

Most of my work consisted of crossing out. Crossing out was the secret of all good writing.
MARK HADDON

For me, disability is a way of getting some extremity, some kind of very difficult situation, that t...
MARK HADDON

As a teenager, I was always this strange mixture of kind of vice-captain of the rugby team and sensi...
MARK HADDON

Reading is a conversation. All books talk. But a good book listens as well.
MARK HADDON

Then he asked if I didn’t like things changing. And I said I wouldn’t mind things changing if I ...
MARK HADDON

Siobhan says that if you raise one eyebrow it can means lots of different things. It can mean 'I wan...
MARK HADDON

But I said that you could still want something that is very unlikely to happen.
MARK HADDON

And it's best if you know a good thing is going to happen, like an eclipse or getting a microscope f...
MARK HADDON

...and I went into the garden and lay down and looked at the stars in the sky and made myself neglig...
MARK HADDON

Being clever was when you looked at how things were and used the evidence to work out something new.
MARK HADDON

And Father said, "Christopher, do you understand that I love you?"
And I said "Yes," because lo...
MARK HADDON

The word "metaphor" means carrying something from one place to another . . . and it is when you desc...
MARK HADDON

And then I thought that I had to be like Sherlock Holmes and I had to detach my mind at will to a re...
MARK HADDON

And because there is something they can’t see people think it has to be special, because people al...
MARK HADDON

Most murders are committed by someone who is known to the victim. In fact, you are most likely to be...
MARK HADDON

Everyone has learning difficulties, because learning to speak French or understanding relativity is ...
MARK HADDON

Lots of things are mysteries. But that doesn't mean there isn't an answer to them. It's just that sc...
MARK HADDON

I find people confusing.
MARK HADDON

And I know I can do this because I went to London on my own, and because I solved the mystery…and ...
MARK HADDON

Metaphors are lies.
MARK HADDON

...and there was nothing to do except to wait and to hurt.
MARK HADDON

And people who believe in God think God has put human beings on earth because they think human being...
MARK HADDON

And when you look at the sky you know you are looking at stars which are hundreds and thousands of l...
MARK HADDON

I like dogs. You always know what a dog is thinking. It has four moods. Happy, sad, cross and concen...
MARK HADDON

The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.
MARK HADDON

And when the universe has finished exploding all the stars will slow down, like a ball that has been...
MARK HADDON

I want my name to mean me.
MARK HADDON

All the other children at my school are stupid. Except I'm not meant to call them stupid, even thoug...
MARK HADDON

I think people believe in heaven because they don't like the idea of dying, because they want to car...
MARK HADDON

On the fifth day, which was a Sunday, it rained very hard. I like it when it rains hard. It sounds l...
MARK HADDON

Sometimes we get sad about things and we don't like to tell other people that we are sad about them....
MARK HADDON

Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are ...
MARK HADDON

I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, e...
MARK HADDON

Jane Austen was writing about boring people with desperately limited lives. We forget this because w...
MARK HADDON

B is for bestseller.
MARK HADDON

I think one of the things you have to learn if you're going to create believable characters is n...
MARK HADDON

Humour and high seriousness... Perfect bedfellows, I think. Though I usually phrase it in terms of c...
MARK HADDON

People stick hearts on Valentine's cards and get married in white dresses and give each other flower...
MARK HADDON

If you came from Mars and tried to analyse British or American society through novels, you'd thi...
MARK HADDON

I'm a writer! If you work in an office, it dampens you. It makes you fit a routine. The effect o...
MARK HADDON

I am atheist in a very religious mould. I'm always asking myself the big questions. Where did we...
MARK HADDON

If you're trying to be a successful writer, and you go into a second-hand bookshop, it's the...
MARK HADDON

If kids like a picture book, they're going to read it at least 50 times. Read anything that ofte...
MARK HADDON

I went to boarding school, and then I went to Oxford, and I know how easy it is for certain groups o...
MARK HADDON

What I love about the theatre is that it's always metaphorical. It's like going back to bein...
MARK HADDON

I don't mean that literary fiction is better than genre fiction, On the contrary; novels can per...
MARK HADDON

At 20, 25, 30, we begin to realise that the possibilities of escape are getting fewer. We have jobs,...
MARK HADDON

I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, e...
MARK HADDON

I think she cared more for that bloody dog than for me, for us. And maybe that's not so stupid, look...
MARK HADDON

Miaow

Consider me.
I sit here like Tiberius,
inscrutable and grand.
I will...
MARK HADDON

people believe in God because the world is very complicated and they think it is very unlikely that ...
MARK HADDON

When people die they are sometimes put into coffins, which means that they don't mix with the earth ...
MARK HADDON

.. a simile is not a lie, unless it is a bad simile.
MARK HADDON

... a rhetorical question. It has a question mark at the end, but you are not meant to answer it bec...
MARK HADDON

Fiction that responds to recent world events is a hostage to fortune, because all momentous events l...
MARK HADDON

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

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...
MARK HADDON

Melissa popped open the clattery little Rotring tin. Pencils, putty rubber, scalpel. She sharpened a...
MARK HADDON

And Siobhan says people go on holidays to see new things and relax, but it wouldn’t make me relaxe...
MARK HADDON

Stories about mental aberration and oddity only make sense in context. Just how do people live with ...
MARK HADDON

And when I am in a new place, because I see everything, it is like when a computer is doing too many...
MARK HADDON

... why I like timetables, because they make sure I don't get lost in time.
MARK HADDON

The Bible does not provide a map for life - only a compass
HADDON ROBINSON

The Scottish sun, shocked by having its usual cloudy underpinnings stripped away, shone feverishly, ...
STUART HADDON

Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strength.
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

There is no exception to this rule: "All the paths of the LORD are mercy and truth unto such as keep...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant."] The original Hebrew ...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Men will allow God to be everywhere but on his throne. They will allow him to be in his workshop to ...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

You say, 'If I had a little more, I should be very satisfied.' You make a mistake. If you are not co...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

The long arm of coincidence.
CHARLES HADDON CHAMBERS

Sincerity makes the very least person to be of more value than the most talented hypocrite.
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Would to God we were all Christians who profess to be Christians, and that we lived up to what we pr...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Of two evils, choose neither.
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

By perseverance the snail reached the ark.
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

The Lord's mercy often rides to the door of our heart upon the black horse of affliction.
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Let eloquence be flung to the dogs rather than souls be lost. What we want is to win souls. They are...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Newspapers are the Bibles of worldlings.
How diligently they read them!
Here they find the...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

As sure as ever God puts his children in the furnace, he will be in the furnace with them.
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Oh, Brethren, it is sickening work to think of your cushioned seats, your chants, your anthems, your...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

What worries you masters you.
HADDON W. ROBINSON

You cannot slander human nature; it is worse than words can paint it.
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

It is said that if Noah's ark had had to be built by a company; they would not have laid the keel ye...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

It's not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness.
CHARLES HADDON-SPURGEON

Purify our minds that we may be "first pure, then peaceable," and fortify our souls, that our peacea...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Grace is the first and last moving cause of salvation; and faith, essential as it is, is only an imp...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Zeal--what is it? How shall I describe it? Possess it, and you will know what it is. Be consumed wit...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Love and self-denial for the object loved go hand-in-hand. If I profess to love a certain person, an...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

He was inspired, and yet he wants books!
He had been preaching for thirty years, and yet he wan...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

The man who never reads will never be read; he who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will no...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

The way to do a great deal is to keep on doing a little. The way to do nothing at all is to be conti...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

No stars gleam as brightly as those which glisten in the polar sky. No water tastes so sweet as that...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Faith goes up the stairs that love has built and looks out the windows which hope has opened.
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

I have a great need for Christ: I have a great Christ for my need.
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

If Christ is not all to you He is nothing to you. He will never go into partnership as a part Saviou...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

When your will is God's will, you will have your will.
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Hope itself is like a star- not to be seen in the sunshine of prosperity, and only to be discovered ...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

I love a minister whose faces invite me to make him my friend.
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

If you will tell me when God permits a Christian to lay aside his armour, I will tell you when Satan...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

The greatest joy of a Christian is to give joy to Christ.
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

If you are renewed by grace, and were to meet your old self, I am sure you would be very anxious to ...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

You will never glory in God till first of all God has killed your glorying in yourself.
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

If sinners be damned, at least let them leap to Hell over our dead bodies. And if they perish, let t...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

We owe all to Jesus crucified. What is your life, my brethren, but the cross? Whence comes the bread...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

It is not great faith but true faith that saves. And the salvation lies not in the faith but in the ...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

It is not great faith, but true faith, that saves; and the salvation lies not in the faith, but in t...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

The age can be impressed. Anything will be accepted by men if you will but preach it with tremendous...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Every unearnest minister is an unfaithful one.
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

If thou dost continually draw thine impulse, thy life, the whole of thy being from the Holy Spirit, ...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Come boldly, O believer, for despite the whisperings of Satan and the doubtings of thine own heart, ...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Visit many good books, but live in the Bible.
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Nobody ever outgrows Scripture; the book widens and deepens with our years.
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Nothing teaches us about the preciousness of the Creator as much as when we learn the emptiness of e...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Friendship is one of the sweetest joys of life. Many might have failed beneath the bitterness of the...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Every Christian is either a missionary or an imposter.
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Whatever you may know, you you cannot be truly efficient ministers if you are not "apt to teach." Yo...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Have you no wish for others to be saved? Then you're not saved yourself, be sure of that!
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Our anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strengths.
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

A Bible that’s falling apart usually belongs to someone who isn’t.
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

There are times when solitude is better than society, and silence is wiser than speech. We should be...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

No innocence can shield a man from the calumnies of the wicked. [...] As a shadow follows its substa...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

He made a pit and digged it. He was cunning in his plans and industrious in his labors. He stooped t...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Curses are like chickens, they always come home to roost.
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

I will not believe that thou hast tasted of the honey of the gospel if thou canst eat it all thyself...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Christ's vast benevolence must, from the very nature of things, have afforded Him the deepest possib...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

The wings of the dove are as soft as they are swift. Gentleness is a sure result of the Sacred Dove'...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

The weak mind is irritated at a little: the strong mind bears it like a rock which moveth not, thoug...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Slavish fear brings not back the backslider to God, but the sweet wooings of love allure him to Jesu...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Throw away the servility of imitation, and rise to the manliness of originality.
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

The most likely man to go to hell is the man who has nothing to do on earth. Idle people tempt the d...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

If we never have headaches through rebuking our children, we shall have plenty of heartaches when th...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Man is a fallen star till he is right with heaven: he is out of order with himself and all around hi...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Stale godliness is ungodliness. Let our religion be as warm, and constant, and natural as the flow o...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

When you see a man with a great deal of religion displayed in his shop window, you may depend upon i...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

If you give your soul up to anything earthly, whether it be the wealth, or the honours, or the pleas...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Is not the gospel its own sign and wonder? Is not this a miracle of miracles, that 'God so loved the...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Is there nothing to sing about to-day? Then borrow a song from tomorrow; sing of
what is yet to...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Humility is to make a right estimate of oneself.
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

If God be near a church, it must pray. And if he be not there, one of the first tokens of his absenc...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

The day we find the perfect church, it becomes imperfect the moment we join it.
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Free will I have often heard of, but I have never seen it. I have always met with will, and plenty o...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

I must take care above all that I cultivate communion with Christ, for though that can never be the ...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Dost thou want another eye beside that of Him who sees every secret thing?
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

That eye which sees anything good in the creature is a blind eye; that eye which fancies it can disc...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

It is well for us when prayers about our sorrows are linked with pleas concerning our sins—when, b...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Every moment thou waitest does but increase thy misery; thine attempts to plume thyself and make thy...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

When you see no present advantage, walk by faith and not by sight. Do God the honor to trust Him whe...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Better for the judge to see my innocence than for me to think I see it. It is very comfortable for m...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Bread is a second cause; the LORD Himself is the first source of our sustenance. He can work without...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

If you cut him, (John Bunyan) he'd bleed Scripture!
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Surely no rebel can expect the King to pardon his treason while he remains in open revolt. No one ca...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

The law is for the self-righteous, to humble their pride: the gospel is for the lost, to remove thei...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

I would do many things to please my friends, but to go to hell to please them is more than I would v...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Proxy religion involves too great a risk: you had better see to your soul's matters yourself, and le...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

The Man of Sorrows is now anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows. Returned in triumph f...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

The more loftily we see Christ enthroned, and the more lowly we are when bowing before the foot of t...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

To rejoice in temporal comforts is dangerous, to rejoice in self is foolish, to rejoice in sin is fa...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

A child's cry touches a father's heart, and our King is the Father of his people. If we can do no mo...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Rest time is the waste time. It is economy to gather fresh strength.
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Said will be a little ahead, but done should follow at his heel.
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

It would be better to be deceived a hundred times than to live a life of suspicion.
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Give yourself to reading.’... You need to read. Renounce as much as you will all light literature,...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Care more for a grain of faith than a ton of excitement.
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

It is the tendency of deep feeling to subdue the manner rather than to render it too energetic.
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

The commonplace books of the old Puritans were invaluable to them. They would never have been able t...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Groanings which cannot be uttered are often prayers which cannot be refused.
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

The Lord gets His best soldiers out of the highlands of affliction.
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

A good character is the best tombstone. Those who loved you and were helped by you will remember you...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

The Word of God will be to you a bulwark and a high tower, a castle of defense against the foe. Oh, ...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Ought we not to look upon our own history as being at least as full of God, as full of His goodness ...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

You shall find it greatly mitigates the sorrow of bereavements, if before bereavement you shall have...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

I have now concentrated all my prayers into one, and that one prayer is this, that I may die to self...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

Repentance is as much a mark of a Christian, as faith is. A very little sin, as the world calls it, ...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

The usual tenor of a man's life, the dwelling of his soul, is the true test of his state.
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

This woman gained comfort in her misery by thinking GREAT THOUGHTS OF CHRIST.
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

As to the number of novels I've abandoned... I shudder to think. I have thrown away five completed novels, and that's a gruesome enough figure. But not necessarily a waste of effort.

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Mark Haddon

As to the number of novels I've abandoned... I shudder to think. I have thrown away five completed novels, and that's a gruesome enough figure. But not necessarily a waste of effort.

Mark Haddon

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