Mark Haddon

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

I like poetry when I don't quite understand why I like it. Poetry isn't just a question of wrapping something up and giving it to someone else to unwrap. It just doesn't work like that.

Every life is narrow. Our only escape is not to run away, but to learn to love the people we are and the world in which we find ourselves.

I am convinced that the reason so many fans leave Dodger Stadium after the seventh inning is that they become bored.

Another thing that freaks me out is time. Time is like a book. You have a beginning, a middle and an end. It's just a cycle.

Jane Austen was an extraordinary woman; to actually be able to survive as a novelist in those days - unmarried - was just unheard of.