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096fbe0
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sometimes people want to be stupid and they do not want to know the truth.
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Mark Haddon |
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b1ef531
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He said, 'are you telling the truth?' I said, 'Yes. I always tell the truth.
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Mark Haddon |
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86b2dc4
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but in life you have to take lots of decisions and if you don't take decisions you would never do anything because you would spend all your time choosing between things you could do.
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Mark Haddon |
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4653236
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I thought about how for a long time scientists were puzzled by the fact that the sky is dark at night, even though there are billions of stars in the universe and there must be stars in every direction you look, so that the sky should be full of starlight because there is very little in the way to stop the light from reaching earth. Then they worked out that the universe was expanding, that the stars were all rushing away from one another a..
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Mark Haddon |
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36f2dea
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Six thousand pounds of muscle powering a hoop of butcher's knives. The only animal
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jaws
poetry
shark
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Mark Haddon |
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f678d0e
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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.
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subtlety
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Mark Haddon |
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8fcd0ce
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Because time is not like space. And when you put something down somewhere, like a protractor or a biscuit, you can have a map in your head to tell you where you have left it, but even if you don't have a map it will still be there because a map is a representation of things that actually exist so you can find the protractor or the biscuit again. And a timetable is a map of time, except that if you don't have a timetable time is not there li..
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Mark Haddon |
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7f085cf
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A Rough Guide Be polite at the reception desk. Not all the knives are in the museum. The waitresses know that a nice boy is formed in the same way as a deckchair. Pay for the beer and send flowers. Introduce yourself as Richard. Do not refer to what somebody did at a particular time in the past. Remember, every Friday we used to go for a walk. I walked. You walked. Everything in the past is irregular. This steak is very good. Sit down. Ther..
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Mark Haddon |
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13e1338
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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.
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Mark Haddon |
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87b4ece
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Life is difficult, you know. It's bloody hard telling the truth all the time. Sometimes it's impossible.
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Mark Haddon |
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ef292a6
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I think I would make a very good astronaut. To be a good astronaut you have to be intelligent and I'm intelligent. You also have to understand how machines work and I'm good at understanding how machines work. You also have to be someone who would like being on their own in a tiny spacecraft thousands and thousands of miles away from the surface of the earth and not panic or get claustrophobia or homesick or insane. And I really like little..
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stars
toby
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Mark Haddon |
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1dcd962
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Snow... blots and softens the top of every object like ice on a plum pudding. Hedges, telegraph wires, cars, postboxes, recycling bins. The world is losing its edges. Look upwards and it seems as if the stars themselves are being poured from the sky and turn out not to be vast and fiery globes after all but tiny, frozen things which melt in the palm of your hand.
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snow
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Mark Haddon |
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0abc59a
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He had dreadlocks, which is what some black people have, but he was white, and dreadlocks is when you never wash your hair and it looks like old rope.
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Mark Haddon |
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df10a09
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How often did he feel it now, this gorgeous, furtive seclusion? In the bath sometimes, maybe. Though Jean failed to understand his need for periodic isolation and regularly dragged him back to earth mid-soak by hammering on the locked door in search of bleach or dental floss.
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Mark Haddon |
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bfe7ea1
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For example, people often say "Be quiet," but they don't tell you how long to be quiet for. Or you see a sign which says KEEP OFF THE GRASS but it should say KEEP OFF THE GRASS AROUND THIS SIGN or KEEP OFF ALL THE GRASS IN THIS PARK because there is lots of grass you are allowed to walk on."
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Mark Haddon |
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2af6f59
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He held up his right hand and spread his fingers out in a fan. I held up my left hand and spread my fingers out in a fan and we made our fingers and thumbs touch each other. We do this because sometimes father wants to give me a hug, but I do not like hugging people so we do this instead, and it means that he loves me.
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Mark Haddon |
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957d340
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And outside the window was like a map, except it was in 3 dimensions and it was life-size because it was the thing it was a map of.
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Mark Haddon |
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e38742e
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Sit still long enough and everything will come to you.
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Mark Haddon |
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aad3bf7
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How do you remember this stuff? But why had she forgotten? That was the real question.
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Mark Haddon |
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affc64b
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En la vida tienes que tomar montones de decisiones, y si no tomaras decisiones, nunca harias nada, porque te pasarias todo el tiempo eligiendo entre las cosas que hacer. O sea, que es bueno tener una razon por la que odias unas cosas y te gustan otras.
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Mark Haddon |
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d2c63cc
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most people are almost blind and they don't see most things and there is lots of spare capacity in their heads and it is filled with things which aren't connected and are silly, like, "I'm worried that I might have left the gas cooker on."
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Mark Haddon |
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9ba15b4
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But in life you have to take lots of deductions and if you don't take decisions you would never do anything because you would spend all your time choosing between things you could do.So it is good to have a reason why you hate some things and why you like others.
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life
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Mark Haddon |
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abd2ec5
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I decided that the dog was probably killed with the fork because I could not see any other wounds in the dog and I do not think you would stick a garden fork into a dog after it had died for some other reason, like cancer, for example, or a road accident. But I could not be certain about this.
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Mark Haddon |
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98ccc37
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Because time is not like space. And when you put something down somewhere, like a protractor or a biscuit, you can have a map in your head to tell you where you have left it, but even if you don't have a map it will still be there because a map is a representation of things that actually exist so you can find the protractor or the biscuits again. And a timetable is a map of time, except that if you don't have a timetable, time isn't there l..
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time
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Mark Haddon |
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d0f432c
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She idly stroked his head in the way one might stroke a dog.
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Mark Haddon |
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aafe877
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And this shows that 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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ca0ec00
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On the fifth day, which was a Sunday, It rained very hard. It sounds like white noise everywhere, which is like silence but not empty. I went upstairs and sat in my room and watched the water falling in the street. It was falling so hard that it looked like white sparks (and this is a simile, too, not a metaphor). P.103
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Mark Haddon |
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6e1d8bc
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because I went to London on my own, and because I went to solved the mystery of Who Killed Wellington? and I found my mother and I was brave and I wrote a book and that means I can do anything.
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confidence
imaginative
inspirational
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Mark Haddon |
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360f5ff
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like when you wake up at night, and the only sounds you hear are the sounds inside your head.
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Mark Haddon |
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7cc306c
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That was because when I was little I didn't understand about other people having minds.
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Mark Haddon |
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fe16563
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People stick hearts on Valentine's cards and get married in white dresses and give each other flowers. They think love is every-thing going right. That's not love. That's self-indulgence. That's good luck. Love is when you walk into the burning building. Love is when the person who means most to you in the world is breathing through a mask and pissing in a bag. Love is when they no longer know your name.
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love
pain
self-indulgence
valentines
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Mark Haddon |
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c921836
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The rule for working out prime numbers is really simple, but no one has ever worked out a simple formula for telling you whether a very big number is a prime number or what the next one will be. If a number is really, really big, it can take a computer years to work out whether it is a prime number. Prime numbers are useful for writing codes and in America they are classed as Military Material and if you find one over 100 digits long you ha..
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Mark Haddon |
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0af7556
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He asked whether I wanted to become an astronaut and I said I did. 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.
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Mark Haddon |
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9717bd9
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It wasn't about believing this or that, it wasn't about good and evil and right and wrong, it was about finding the strength to bear the discomfort that came with being in the world.
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Mark Haddon |
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899cbc9
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Siobhan dice che se si solleva un sopracciglio, questo gesto puo significare molte cose differenti. Puo voler dire: "Voglio fare sesso con te", ma puo anche essere inteso come: "Hai appena detto una cosa veramente stupida"."
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Mark Haddon |
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7068005
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And this means time is a mystery, and not even a thing, and no one has solved the puzzle of what time is, exactly. 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. And this is why I like timetables, because they make sure you don't get lost in time.
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Mark Haddon |
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e591bb3
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One person looks around and see a universe created by a God who watches over its long unfurling, marking the fall of sparrows and listening to the prayers of his finest creation. Another person believes that life, in all its baroque complexity, is a chemical aberration that will briefly decorate the surface of a ball of rock spinning somewhere among a billion galaxies. And the two of them could talk for hours and find no greater difference ..
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Mark Haddon |
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5f3c453
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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 non-stick frying pans.
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Mark Haddon |
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9d409db
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And I remember looking at the two of you and seeing you together and thinking how you were really differant with him. Much calmer. And you didn't shout at one another. And it made me so sad because it was like you didn't really need me at all. And somehow that was even worse than you and me arguing all the time because it was like I was invisible. And I think that was when I realised you and your father were probably better off if I wasn't ..
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Mark Haddon |
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83d2303
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La gente dice que siempre hay que decir la verdad. Pero no lo dicen en serio porque no se te permite decirle a los viejos que son viejos y no se te permite decirle a la gente que huele raro o a un adulto que se ha tirado un pedo.
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Mark Haddon |
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ab09405
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Lots of people wrote to the magazine to say that Marilyn vos Savant was wrong, even when she explained very carefully why she was right. Of the letters she got about the problem, 92% said that she was wrong and lots of these were from mathematicians and scientists. Here are some of the things they said: 'I'm very concerned with the general public's lack of mathematical skills. Please help by confessing your error.' -Robert Sachs, Ph.D., Geo..
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irony
mathematics
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Mark Haddon |
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8f23172
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So often these days she seemed to hover between worlds, none of them wholly real.
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Mark Haddon |
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1cf2e57
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Quando avro una laurea in matematica, o in fisica, o in matematica e fisica, trovero un lavoro e guadagnero un sacco di soldi e saro in grado di pagare qualcuno che si occupi di me e cucini per me e mi lavi i vestiti, oppure trovero una donna che mi sposi e si prenda cura di me, che mi faccia un po' di compagnia per non rimanere da solo.
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Mark Haddon |
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f911383
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Come devono essere tristi, quei figli unici. Crescere in una casa piena di adulti, sempre in minoranza, sempre sconfitti, nemmeno un po' di quella stupidita sfrenata, niente scherzi da poter ripetere cento volte, nessuno con cui cantare, nessuno con cui litigare, nessuno con cui fare il principe, o lo schiavo [...] in seguito, quando i genitori cadono in disgrazia e diventano essere umani incasinati e banali e si trasformano pian piano da p..
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Mark Haddon |