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9f4a843
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And people who believe in God think God has put human beings on the 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.
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Mark Haddon |
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9ba6491
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And it is funny because economists are not real scientists, and because logicians think more clearly, but mathematicians are best.
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logicians
mathematicians
nerdy
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Mark Haddon |
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2896030
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How pleased we are to have our eyes opened but how easily we close them again.
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Mark Haddon |
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a6336db
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And that is why a dog can go to the vet and have a really big operation and have metal pins sticking out of its leg but if it sees a cat it forgets that it has pins sticking out of its leg and chases after the cat. But when a person has an operation it has a picture in its head of the hurt carrying on for months and months. And it has a picture of all the stitches in its leg and the broken bone and the pins and even if it sees a bus it has ..
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Mark Haddon |
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5e7f8e9
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Prime numbers are useful for writing codes and in America they are classed as Military Material and if you find one over 100 digits you have to tell the CIA and they buy it off you for $10,000. But it would not be a very good way of making a living.
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humour
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Mark Haddon |
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33e4cd2
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I cooked his meals. I cleaned his clothes. I looked after him every weekend. I look after him when he was ill. I took him to the doctor. I worried myself sick everytime he wandered off somewhere at night. I went to school every time he got into a fight. And you? What? You wrote him some fucking letters.
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Mark Haddon |
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5819632
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Eventually scientists will discover something that explains ghosts, just like they discovered electricity, which explained lightning, and it might be something about people's brains, or something about the earth's magnetic field, or it might be some new force altogether. And then ghosts won't be mysteries. They will be like electricity and rainbows and nonstick frying pans.
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Mark Haddon |
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64872d4
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Time is only the relationship between the different things changing
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Mark Haddon |
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9ae7d2a
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I did know what it meant when you say you promise something. You have to say that you will never do something again and then you must never do it because that would make the promise a lie.
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Mark Haddon |
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74a916a
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Lots of things are mystries. But that doesn't mean there isn't an answer to them. It's just that scientists haven't found the answer yet.
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science
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Mark Haddon |
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34ea346
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And herein lies the key to the brilliance of Mark Haddon's choice of narrator: The most wrenching of emotional moments are chronicled by a boy who cannot fathom emotion. The effect is dazzling, making for a novel that is deeply funny, poignant, and fascinating in its portrayal of a person whose curse and blessing is a mind that perceives the world literally.
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Mark Haddon |
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deeb852
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But 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 don't really know we are sad. So we say we aren't sad. But really we are.
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Mark Haddon |
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a98499f
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He said that it was very difficult to become an astronaut. I said that I knew. You had to become an officer in the air force and you had to take lots of orders and be prepared to kill other human beings, and I couldn't take orders. Also I didn't have 20/20 vision, which you needed to be a pilot. But I said that you could still want something that is very unlikely to happen.
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Mark Haddon |
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fb2493b
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Reading is primarily a symptom. Of a healthy imagination, of our interest in this and other worlds, of our ability to be still and quiet, of our ability to dream during daylight.
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Mark Haddon |
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78132cc
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What actually happens when you die is that your brain stops working and your body rots, like Rabbit did when he died and we buried him in the earth at the bottom of the garden. And all his molecules were broken down into other molecules and they went into the earth and were eaten by worms and went into the plants and if we go dig in the same place in 10 years there will be nothing except his skeleton left. And in 1,000 years even his skelet..
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nature
death
science
life
bodies
cremation
rot
burial
molecules
decomposition
decay
energy
funeral
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Mark Haddon |
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8e64115
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companionship refused is worse than loneliness.
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Mark Haddon |
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1c5ec37
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It was 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs. Shears's house.
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opening-lines
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Mark Haddon |
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6f10e75
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And it was strange because he was calling, "Christopher. . . ? Christopher. . . ?" and I could see my name written out as he was saying it. Often I can see what someone is saying written out like it is being printed on a computer screen, especially if they are in another room. But this was not on a computer screen. I could see it written really large, like it was on a big advert on the side of a bus. And it was in my mother's handwriting"
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Mark Haddon |
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a94c04c
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At teenage parties he was always wandering into the garden, sitting on a bench in the dark . . . staring up at the constellations and pondering all those big questions about the existence of God and the nature of evil and the mystery of death, questions which seemed more important than anything else in the would until a few years passed and some real questions had been dumped into your lap, like how to earn a living, and why people fell in ..
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Mark Haddon |
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c47242a
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You could say all you liked about reason and logic and common sense and imagination, but when the chips were down the one skill you needed was the ability to think about absolutely nothing whatsoever.
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Mark Haddon |
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3294a47
|
And I go out of Father's house and I walk down the street, and it is very quiet even thought it is the middle of the day and I can't hear any noise except birds singing and wind and sometimes buildings falling down in the distance, and if I stand very close to traffic lights I can hear a little click as the colors change.
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Mark Haddon |
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087d85d
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MR JEAVONS SAID THAT I liked maths because it was safe. He said I liked maths because it meant solving problems, and these problems were difficult and interesting, but there was always a straightforward answer at the end. And what he meant was that maths wasn't like life because in life there are no straightforward answers at the end. I know he meant this because this is what he said. This is because Mr Jeavons doesn't understand numbers. H..
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Mark Haddon |
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3b54f76
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Some people think the Milky Way is a long line of stars, but it isn't. Our galaxy is a huge disk of stars millions of light-years across, and the solar system is somewhere near the outside edge of the disk.
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Mark Haddon |
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0ce4254
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It was true. There really was no limit to the ways in which you could say the wrong thing to your children. You offered an olive branch and it was the wrong olive branch at the wrong time.
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Mark Haddon |
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b47cbf8
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And it was exactly like having flu that time because I wanted it to stop, like you can just pull the plug of a computer out of the wall if it crashes, because I wanted to go to sleep so that I wouldn't have to think because the only thing I could think was how much it hurt because there was no room for anything else in my head, but I couldn't go to sleep and I just had to sit there and there was nothing to do except to wait and hurt.
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Mark Haddon |
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bf61e2d
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People think computers are different from people because they don't have minds, even though, in the Turing test, computers can have conversations with people about the weather and wine and what Italy is like, and they can even tell jokes.
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Mark Haddon |
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9496f08
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I find people confusing. This is for two main reasons. The first main reason is that people do a lot of talking without using any words. Siobhan says that if you raise one eyebrow it can mean lots of different things. It can mean "I want to do sex with you" and it can also mean "I think that what you just said was very stupid." Siobhan also says that if you close your mouth and breathe out loudly through your nose, it can mean that you are ..
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Mark Haddon |
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1a2462e
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And when I am in a new place, because I see everything, it is like when a computer is doing too many things at the same time and the central processor unit is blocked up and there isn't any space left to think about other things. And when I am in a new place and there are lots of people there it is even harder because people are not like cows and flowers and grass and they can talk to you and do things that you don't expect, so you have to ..
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people
going-out
thinking
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Mark Haddon |
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3f914fe
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Maybe it wasn't God after all, maybe it was the heart which punished one with such exquisite accuracy.
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Mark Haddon |
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63dec20
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This is how we leave the world, with the heart weeping, and the hope that distance brings the solving wonder of one last clear view before that long sleep about the weather's changes
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Mark Haddon |
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bed450c
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There are three men on a train. One of them is an economist and one of them is a logician and one of them is a mathematician. And they have just crossed the border into Scotland (I don't know why they are going to Scotland) and they see a brown cow standing in a field from the window of the train (and the cow is standing parallel to the train). And the economist says, "Look, the cows in Scotland are brown." And the logician says, "No. There..
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Mark Haddon |
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52ff0c2
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I wondered whether Mrs. Shears had told the police that I had killed Wellington and whether, when the police found out that she had lied, she would go to prison. Because telling lies about people is called slander.
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Mark Haddon |
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2cfb3eb
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intuition can sometimes get things wrong. And intuition is what people use in life to make decisions. But logic can help you work out the right answer.
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Mark Haddon |
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0cc6ad3
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Family, that slippery word, a star to every wandering bark, and everyone sailing under a different sky.
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Mark Haddon |
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4f21411
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Appalling things can happen to children. And even a happy childhood is filled with sadnesses. Is there any other period in your life when you hate your best friend on Monday and love them again on Tuesday? But at eight, 10, 12, you don't realise you're going to die. There is always the possibility of escape. There is always somewhere else and far away, a fact I had never really appreciated until I read Gitta Sereny's profoundly unsettling C..
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reading
literary-fiction
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Mark Haddon |
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549bcd6
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It was like pressing your thumbnail against a radiator when it's really hot and the pain starts and it makes you want to cry and the pain keeps hurting even when you take your thumb away from the radiator.
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Mark Haddon |
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c726ff1
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I like when it rains hard.It sounds like white noise everywhere,which is like silence but not empty.
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Mark Haddon |
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4991985
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People believe in God because the world is very complicated and they think it is very unlikely that anything as complicated as a flying squirrel or the human eye or a brain could happen by chance. But they should think logically and if they thought logically they would see that they can only ask this question because it has already happened and they exist. And there are billions of planets where there is no life, but there is no one on thos..
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Mark Haddon |
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8341a7a
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He had always thought of solitary diners as sad. But now that he was the solitary diner, he felt rather superior. On account of the book, mostly. Learning something while everyone else was wasting time. Like working at night.
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Mark Haddon |
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0d83bd7
|
And people are different from animals because they can have pictures on the screens in their heads of things which they are not looking at. They can have pictures of someone in another room. Or they can have a picture of what is going to happen tomorrow. Or they can have pictures of themselves as an astronaut. Or they can have pictures of really big numbers. Or they can have pictures of Chains of Reasoning when they're trying to work someth..
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Mark Haddon |
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6fb3495
|
Places remained and time flowed through them like wind through the grass. Right now. This was the future turning into the past. One thing becoming another. Like a flame on the end of a match. Wood turning into smoke. If only we could burn brighter. A barn roaring in the night.
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Mark Haddon |
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b901832
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And so, if you get lost in time it is like being lost in a desert, except that you can't see the desert because it is not a thing.
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Mark Haddon |
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598a0b4
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I took the little radio from the kitchen and I went and sat in the spare room and I tuned it halfway between two stations so that all I could hear was white noise and I turned the volume up really loud and I held it against my ear and the sound filled my head and it hurt so that I couldn't feel any other sort of hurt, like the hurt in my chest
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Mark Haddon |
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713183c
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Everything seemed suspended, in some kind of balance. Obviously someone would come along and fuck it up, because that's what other people did.
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Mark Haddon |