Daniel > Daniel's Quotes

“Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“All the other children at my school are stupid. Except I'm not meant to call them stupid, even though this is what they are.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“On the fifth day, which was a Sunday, it rained very hard. I like it when it rains hard. It sounds like white noise everywhere, which is like silence but not empty.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“I think people believe in heaven because they don't like the idea of dying, because they want to carry on living and they don't like the idea that other people will move into their house and put their things into the rubbish.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“Sometimes we get sad about things and we don't like to tell other people that we are sad about them. We like to keep it a secret. Or sometimes, we are sad but we really don't know why we are sad, so we say we aren't sad but we really are.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“And people who believe in God think God has put human beings on earth because they think human beings are the best animal, but human beings are just an animal and they will evolve into another animal, and that animal will be cleverer and it will put human beings into a zoo, like we put chimpanzees and gorillas into a zoo. Or human beings will all catch a disease and die out or they will make too much pollution and kill themselves, and then there will only be insects in the world and they will be the best animal.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“Lots of things are mysteries. But that doesn't mean there isn't an answer to them. It's just that scientists haven't found the answer yet.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“And because there is something they can’t see people think it has to be special, because people always think there is something special about what they can’t see, like the dark side of the moon, or the other side of a black hole, or in the dark when they wake up at night and they’re scared.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“Everyone has learning difficulties, because learning to speak French or understanding relativity is difficult.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“Siobhan says that if you raise one eyebrow it can means lots of different things. It can mean 'I want to do sex with you' and it can also mean 'I think what you just said was very stupid.”
― Haddon Mark, El curioso incidente del perro a medianoche

“And Father said, "Christopher, do you understand that I love you?"
And I said "Yes," because loving someone is helping them when they get into trouble, and looking after them, and telling them the truth, and Father looks after me when I get into trouble, like coming to the police station, and he looks after me by cooking meals for me, and he always tells me the truth, which means that he loves me.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“The word "metaphor" means carrying something from one place to another . . . and it is when you describe something by using a word for something that it isn't. This means that the word "metaphor" is a metaphor.

I think it should be called a lie because a pig is not like a day and people do not have skeletons in their cupboards. And when I try and make a picture of the phrase in my head it just confuses me because imagining and apple in someone's eye doesn't have anything to do with liking someone a lot and it makes you forget what the person was talking about.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“I have lived a great deal among grown-ups. I have seen them intimately, close at hand. And that hasn’t much improved my opinion of them.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow
Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead
Walk beside me… just be my friend”
― Albert Camus

“Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.”
― Albert Camus

“Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?”
― Albert Camus

“Thus, the ultimate choice for a man, inasmuch as he is driven to transcend himself, is to create or to destroy, to love or to hate.”
― Erich Fromm, The Sane Society

“Willows whiten, aspens quiver, little breezes dusk and shiver, thro' the wave that runs forever by the island in the river, flowing down to Camelot. Four gray walls and four gray towers, overlook a space of flowers, and the silent isle imbowers, the Lady of Shalott.”
― Alfred Tennyson Tennyson, Selected Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson

“We live for books.”
― Umberto Eco

“Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it means...”
― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

“[redacted; spurious].”
― Joseph Stalin

“Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters.”
― Samuel Adams

“Abra was ready ere I called her name. And though I called another, Abra came.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Each time we come to a book we give it a different reading because we bring a different person to it. It is not you who reads the book, the book reads you”
― Jack Lasenby, The Shaman and the Droll