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"I don't remember deciding to become a writer. You decide to become a dentist or a postman. For me, writing is like being gay. You finally admit that this is who you are, you come out and hope that no one runs away."
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Exlpore more Hope quotes
"I took a breath and let it go and suddenly the air was crisper and my lungs lighter and suddenly there was him saying my name in different ways and I catch myself throwing glances in the mirror, seeing someone I don't know quite yet but I can't wait to, and that is the start of everything."
"Beware how you take away hope from another human being."
"Jake went in, aware that he had, for the first time in three weeks, opened a door without hoping madly to find another world on the other side. A bell jingled overhead. The mild, spicy smell of old books hit him, and the smell was somehow like coming home."
"I felt lonely and content at the same time. I believe that is a rare kind of happiness."
"The rest of it - and perhaps the best of it - is a permission slip: you can, you should, and if you're brave enough to start, you will."
"Only the poet or the saint can water an asphalt pavement in the confident anticipation that lilies will reward his labour."
Explore more quotes by Mark Haddon
"My book has a very simple surface, but there are layers of irony and paradox all the way through it."
"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."
"As a kid, I didn't read a great deal of fiction, and I've forgotten most of what I did read."
"Bore children, and they stop reading. There's no room for self-indulgence or showing off or setting the scene."
"No one wants to know how clever you are. They don't want an insight into your mind, thrilling as it might be. They want an insight into their own."
"I am atheist in a very religious mould. I'm always asking myself the big questions. Where did we come from? Is there a meaning to all of this? When I find myself in church, I edit the hymns as I sing them."
"I think most writers feel like they're on the outside looking in much of the time. All of us feel, to a certain extent, alienated from the stuff going on around us."
"I started writing books for children because I could illustrate them myself and because, in my innocence, I thought they'd be easier."
"I better make the plot good. I wanted to make it grip people on the first page and have a big turning point in the middle, as there is, and construct the whole thing like a roller coaster ride."
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