Mark Haddon Fiction Quotations

Young readers have to be entertained. No child reads fiction because they think it's going to make them a better person.

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.

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

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.

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.