The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Quotes

“But Mother was cremated. This means that she was put into a coffin and burned and ground up and turned into ash and smoke. I do not know what happens to the ash and I couldn’t ask at the crematorium because I didn’t go to the funeral. But the smoke goes out of the chimney and into the air and sometimes I look up into the sky and I think that there are molecules of Mother up there, or in clouds over Africa or the Antarctic, or coming down as rain in the rain forests in Brazil, or in snow somewhere.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“And I think that there are so many things just in one house that it would take years to think about all of them properly. And also, a thing is interesting because of thinking about it and not because of being new. For example, Siobhan showed me that you can wet your finger and rub the edge of a thin glass and make a singing noise. And you can put different amounts of water in different glasses and they make different notes because they have what are called different resonant frequencies, and you can play a tune like Three Blind Mice. And lots of people have thin glasses in their houses and they don’t know you can do this.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“…penso che i numeri primi siano come la vita. Sono molto logici ma non si riesce mai a scoprirne le regole, anche se si passa tutto il tempo pensarci su.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“Los niños de mi colegio son estúpidos. Pero se supone que no he de llamarlos estúpidos, ni siquiera aunque sea eso lo que son. Se supone que he de decir que tienen dificultades de aprendizaje o que tienen necesidades especiales.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“Charlar un poco es sólo ser simpático, ¿no?
—Yo no sé charlar —dije.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“—Bueno, ¿cómo te va, capitán?
Y yo dije:
—Me va muy bien, gracias —que es lo que se supone que tienes que decir.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“—Buen chico.
Y yo dije:
—Gracias por la cena —porque eso es ser educado.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“porque cuando nos hablan del Peligro que suponen los Desconocidos en el colegio dicen que si un hombre se te acerca y te habla y te da miedo debes buscar a una señora y correr hacia ella, porque las señoras son más seguras.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“The dog was dead. There was a garden fork sticking out of the dog...I decided 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.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“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., George Mason University... 'I am sure you will receive many letters from high school and college students. Perhaps you should keep a few addresses for future columns.' -W. Robert Smith, Ph.D., Georgia State University... 'If all those Ph.D.'s were wrong, the country would be in very serious trouble.' -Everett Harman, Ph.D., U.S. Army Research Institute”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“But I don't take any notice because I don't listen to what other people say and only sticks and stones can break my bones and I have a Swiss Army knife if they hit me.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“It sounds like white noise everywhere, which is like silcence but not empty.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“Mother used to say that it meant Christopher was a nice name because it was a story about being kind and helpful, but I do not want my name to mean a story about being kind and helpful. I want my name to mean me.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“This is my knife. It is very sharp and very eager to hurt you.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“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 have to tell the CIA and they buy it off you for $10,000.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“Then he snored and I jumped and I could hear the blood in my ears and my heart going really fast and a pain like someone had blown up a really big balloon inside my chest. I wondered if I was going to have a heart attack.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“quod erat demonstrandum, which is Latin for which is the thing that was going to be proved, which means thus it is proved.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“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.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“argumant.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“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 living in the house.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“We had a lot of argumants like that. Because I often thought I couldn't take any more. And your father is really pacient but I'm not, I get cross, even though I don't mean too. And by the end we stopped talking to each other very much because we knew it would always end up in an argumant and it would go nowere, And I felt realy lonley.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“he smelled of something I do not know the name of which Father often smells of when he comes home from work.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“But the smoke goes out of the chimney and into the air and sometimes I look up into the sky and I think that there are molecules of Mother up there, or in clouds over Africa or the Antarctic, or coming down as rain in the rainforests in Brazil, or in snow somewhere.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“like when you wake up at night, and the only sounds you hear are the sounds inside your head.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“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.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“Siobhan said that I should write something I would want to read myself. Mostly I read books about science and maths. I do not like proper novels. In proper novels people say things like," I am veined with iron, with silver and with streaks of common mud. I cannot contract into the firm fist which whose clench who do not depend on stimulus. "What does this mean? I do not know. Nor does Father. Nor does Siobhan or Mr. Jeavons. I have asked them.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“And this is why people's brains are like computers. And it's not because they are special but because they have to keep turning off for fractions of a second while the screen changes. 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

“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.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“I do not always do what I am told. And this is because when people tell you what to do it is usually confusing and does not make sense.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time