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"I've written 16 children's books and five unpublished novels. Some of the latter were breathtakingly bad."
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"Even a book with completely empty pages will change you because you will start thinking about the reason behind this emptiness and once you enter the thinking territory it means that you entered a territory of change!"

"There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate's loot on Treasure Island."

"Always in my books, I like to throw that rogue element into a stable situation and then see what happens."

"I wrote two plotted books, got some of the fundamentals of storytelling down, then... it's sort of like taking the training wheels off, trying to write a book that's fun in the same way without relying on quite such mechanical or external beats."

"Sometimes, looking at the many books I have at home, I feel I shall die before I come to the end of them, yet I cannot resist the temptation of buying new books. Whenever I walk into a bookstore and find a book on one of my hobbies - for example, Old English or Old Norse poetry - I say to myself, "What a pity I can't buy that book, for I already have a copy at home."

"Books" - Snell smiled - "are a kind of magic."

"My last comment was, though, that Congress has cooked the books."
Explore more quotes by Mark Haddon

"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."

"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."

"As a kid, I didn't read a great deal of fiction, and I've forgotten most of what I did read."

"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."

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

"There's something with the physical size of America... American writers can write about America and it can still feel like a foreign country."

"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."

"I've worked in television long enough to know that when you stop enjoying that type of thing you go home and do something else."

"I started writing books for children because I could illustrate them myself and because, in my innocence, I thought they'd be easier."
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