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"Young readers have to be entertained. No child reads fiction because they think it's going to make them a better person."
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"I also read modern novels - I have just had to read 60 as I am one of the judges for the Orange Fiction Prize."
"CALVIN:Our hero regains consciousness at the feet of a sarcastic alien."
"Whoever knows that the mind is a fiction and devoid of anything real knows that his own mind neither exists nor doesn't exist."
"Writing is writing, and stories are stories. Perhaps the only true genres are fiction and non-fiction. And even there, who can be sure?"
"I learned to write fiction the way I learned to read fiction - by skipping the parts that bored me."
"And then I met Jerry and he's such a creative fiction writer, and I don't know if there's ever been a team put together the way we are - where one person does the theological way out and suggestions, and the other person goes into the cave and does the fiction writing."
"And if we can imagine the art of fiction come alive and standing in our midst, she would undoubtedly bid us break her and bully her, as well as honour and love her, for so her youth is renewed and her sovereignty assured."
Explore more quotes by Mark Haddon
"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."
"If you enjoy math and you write novels, it's very rare that you'll get a chance to put your math into a novel. I leapt at the chance."
"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."
"At 20, 25, 30, we begin to realise that the possibilities of escape are getting fewer. We have jobs, children, partners, debts. This is the part of us to which literary fiction speaks."
"If kids like a picture book, they're going to read it at least 50 times. Read anything that often, and even minor imperfections start to feel like gravel in the bed."
"Children simply don't make the distinction; a book is either good or bad. And some of the books they think are good are very, very bad indeed."
"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."
"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."
"I don't mean that literary fiction is better than genre fiction, On the contrary; novels can perform two functions and most perform only one."
"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."
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