{"author":"Mark Haddon","author_id":"Mark+Haddon","total_quotes":65,"quotes":[{"text":"And Siobhan says people go on holidays to see new things and relax, but it wouldn’t make me relaxed and you can see new things by looking at earth under a microscope or drawing the shape of the solid made when 3 circular rods of equal thickness intersect at right angles. And I think that there are so many things just in one house that it would take years to think about all of them properly. And also, a thing is interesting because of thinking about it and not because of it being new.","author":"Mark Haddon","tags":["holidays","interesting","new","thinking","vacation"],"id":1923,"author_id":"Mark+Haddon"},{"text":"I want my name to mean me.","author":"Mark Haddon","tags":["existentialism"],"id":8162,"author_id":"Mark+Haddon"},{"text":"A Rough GuideBe polite at the reception desk.Not all the knives are in the museum.The waitresses know that a nice boyis formed in the same way as a deckchair.Pay for the beer and send flowers.Introduce yourself as Richard.Do not refer to what somebody didat a particular time in the past.Remember, every Friday we used to gofor a walk. I walked. You walked.Everything in the past is irregular.This steak is very good. Sit down.There is no wine, but there is ice cream.Eat slowly. I have many matches. ","author":"Mark Haddon","tags":["poetry"],"id":10032,"author_id":"Mark+Haddon"},{"text":"Snow... Blots and softens the top of every object like ice on a plum pudding. Hedges, telegraph wires, cars, postboxes, recycling bins. The world is losing its edges. Look upwards and it seems as if the stars themselves are being poured from the sky and turn out not to be vast and fiery globes after all but tiny, frozen things which melt in the palm of your hand.","author":"Mark Haddon","tags":["nature","snow"],"id":12407,"author_id":"Mark+Haddon"},{"text":"At twenty life was like wrestling an octopus. Every moment mattered. At thirty it was a walk in the country. Most of the time your mind was somewhere else. By the time you got to seventy, it was probably like watching snooker on the telly.","author":"Mark Haddon","tags":["age","life"],"id":30637,"author_id":"Mark+Haddon"},{"text":"She is off the heart's map and her compass is spinning.","author":"Mark Haddon","tags":["heart","lost","love"],"id":31423,"author_id":"Mark+Haddon"},{"text":"And when you look at the sky you know you are looking at stars which are hundreds and thousands of light-years away from you. And some of the stars don’t even exist anymore because their light has taken so long to get to us that they are already dead, or they have exploded and collapsed into red dwarfs. And that makes you seem very small, and if you have difficult things in you life it is nice to think that they are what is called negligible, which means they are so small you don’t have to take them into account when you are calculating something.","author":"Mark Haddon","tags":["astronomy","cosmology","life","science"],"id":37265,"author_id":"Mark+Haddon"},{"text":"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.","author":"Mark Haddon","tags":["humorous","subtlety"],"id":37786,"author_id":"Mark+Haddon"},{"text":"And it's best if you know a good thing is going to happen, like an eclipse or getting a microscope for Christmas. And it's bad if you know a bad thing is going to happen, like having a filling or going to France. But I think it is worst if you don't know whether it is a good thing or a bad thing which is going to happen.","author":"Mark Haddon","tags":["future"],"id":38173,"author_id":"Mark+Haddon"},{"text":"No more things should be presumed to exist than are absolutely necessary.","author":"Mark Haddon","tags":["beautiful","simple-truth"],"id":52989,"author_id":"Mark+Haddon"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":65,"pages":7,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}