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

“He was an inspector. I could tell because he wasn’t wearing a uniform. He also had a very hairy nose. It looked as if there were two very small mice hiding in his nostrils.*2”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“Mr. Jeavons said that I was a very clever boy. I said that I wasn’t clever. I was just noticing how things were, and that wasn’t clever. That was just being observant. Being clever was when you looked at how things were and used the evidence to work out something new. Like the universe expanding, or who committed a murder. Or if you see someone’s name and you give each letter a value from 1 to 26 (a = 1, b = 2, etc.) and you add the numbers up in your head and you find that it makes a prime number, like Jesus Christ (151), or Scooby-Doo (113), or Sherlock Holmes (163), or Doctor Watson (167). Mr. Jeavons asked me whether this made me feel safe, having things always in a nice order, and I said it did.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“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. Also people think they’re not computers because they have feelings and computers don’t have feelings. But feelings are just having a picture on the screen in your head of what is going to happen tomorrow or next year, or what might have happened instead of what did happen, and if it is a happy picture they smile and if it is a sad picture they cry. 167.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“And when you look at the sky you know you are looking at stars which are hundreds and thousands of light-years away from you.........and that makes you seem very small, and if you have difficult things in your life it is nice to think that they are what is called negligible, which means that they are so small you don't have to take them into account when you are calculating something.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“Una mentira es cuando dices que ha pasado algo que no ha pasado. Pero siempre es una sola cosa la que pasa en un momento determinado y en un sitio determinado. Y hay un número infinito de cosas que no han pasado en ese momento y en ese sitio”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“i find people confusing.
this is for 2 main reasons.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

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

“But you shoutet and you knocked those mixers off the shelf and there was a big crash.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

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

“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

“And I said, “I needed to sit down and be quiet and think.” And he said, “OK, let’s keep it simple. What are you doing at the railway station?” And I said, “I’m going to see Mother.” And he said, “Mother?”
― 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 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

“A mí me gustan los horarios, porque son la garantía de que no te vas a perder en el tiempo.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“Es mejor saber que una cosa buena va a pasar, como un eclipse, o que te regalen un microscopio por Navidad, que saber que una cosa mala va a pasar, como que te pongan un empaste o tener que ir a Francia. Pero creo que lo peor de todo es no saber si lo que va a pasar es una cosa buena o una cosa mala.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“And this means that time is a mystery,not even a thing,and no one has ever 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's not a thing”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“also had a very hairy nose. It looked as if there were two very small mice hiding in his nostrils.1”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“1 This is not a metaphor, it is a simile, which means that it really did look like there were two very small mice hiding in his nostrils and if you make a picture in your head of a man with two very small mice hiding in his nostrils you will know what the police inspector looked like. And a simile is not a lie, unless it is a bad simile.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“Christopher explains that he ranks the day according to the number and color of the cars he sees on his way to school. Three red cars in a row equal a Good Day, and five equal a Super Good Day. Four yellow cars in a row make it a Black Day. On Black Days Christopher refuses to speak to anyone and sits by himself at lunch.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“No more things should be presumed to exist than are absolutely necessary.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“Y es porque hay algo que no pueden ver que la gente cree que tiene que ser especial, porque la gente siempre piensa que hay algo especial en lo que no puede ver, como el lado oculto de la Luna, o el otro lado de un agujero negro, o en la oscuridad cuando se despierta por la noche y tiene miedo.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“said this. He kept on looking through”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“I do not like strangers because I do not like people I have never met before. They are hard to understand.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“Then, when I've got a degree in maths, or physics, or maths and physics, I will be able to get a job and earn lots of money and I will be able to pay someone who can look after me and cook my meals and wash my clothes, or I will get a lady to marry me and be my wife and she can look after me so I can have company and not be on my own.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“I always thought it was disgusting and ugly, how the weak live their lives depending on each other shamefully licking each other's wounds. A way of life that no one could truly want. I was certain that no greatness could ever come from that. That's what I thought until I met you.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“sometimes the children from the school down the road see us in the street when we’re getting off the bus and they shout, “Special Needs! Special Needs!” 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 my Swiss Army knife if they hit me and if I kill them it will be self-defense and I won’t go to prison.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“Then he said, “Christopher, you”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“I do not tell lies. Mother used to say that was because I was a good person. But it is not because I am a good person. It is because I can't tell lies.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“Mad as a fucking hatter. Jesus,”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“IT WAS 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs Shears’ house. Its eyes were closed. It looked as if it was running on its side, the way dogs run when they think they are chasing a cat in a dream. But the dog was not running or asleep. The dog was dead. There was a garden fork sticking out of the dog. The points of the fork must have gone all the way through the dog and into the ground because the fork had not fallen over. 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.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“And then, after a while, she said, 'Christopher, let me hold your hand. Just for once. Just for me. Will you? I won't hold it hard.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time