Mark Haddon Quotes

Most people don't grow up. It's too damn difficult. What happens is most people get older. That's the truth of it. They honor their credit cards, they find parking spaces, they marry, they have the nerve to have children, but they don't grow up.

Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional.

I went through this delayed-adolescence thing. I didn't want to be tied down to a family.

When I was first divorced, I started dating younger women, and it was really exciting. But after a while I was like, 'This is just dumb.'

I feel lucky that I had my children late. Not that I would advise it in any shape or form. But I know friends who had children when they were young, struggled with feeling trapped. I can honestly say I've never once resented the fact that I couldn't go out because of my kids.

I think, if you put a camera in anyone's life and document it daily from the age of 21 to 27, there are going to be things that aren't always pretty.

When you start acting as a child, you grow up ahead of your movies.

Here's the truth. Your teens and twenties are your Plan A. At 50, you're assessing whether Plan B or Plan C or any of the other plans you hatched actually worked. Your sixties and seventies, they're an improvisation.

I feel like I grew up in such a big way in the past couple of years, in a way that I never thought I would. You can't be the enfant terrible when you have the enfant at home.

There are many things that only teenagers can do. Many things that they learn while they are teenagers will become important tools for them after they grow up, and I hope teenagers would make choices that they will not regret in the future.

Being older now, grown, I'm like, 'What do we really do that's fun?' I'm kind of corny when you think about it. What could I rhyme about? Let me see, um, I gotta pay the rent today.

I definitely do live my life at a different pace now than I used to... I feel like I'm guilty of all the overindulgences of a guy in his 20s and early 30s could've gone through, but I look back on it with great fondness. I don't have a lot of regrets.

We all have to grow up some time.

When I read a good story, I often start thinking, 'Should I live my life according to what this character chooses and values?' It makes me think. I feel like I grew up to be a more mature person while thinking about character development in these fictional situations.

I think, for every phase of your life, you take something out of it, you learn from it, you grow from it. You just have to try to take what you can from it and then move on to the next phase of your life to be better.

At any age, you are growing up at some level, but as far as maturing and growing up, a lot of that happens in your 20s: a lot of mistakes still to make and insecurities. But at around 27, I started to come into my own as a real adult.

Everybody just has different steps in their life that they take to do what they should.

I know I felt like I was ready to be an adult long before the rest of the world agreed. I'd already realized that a lot of grown-ups didn't know any more than I did, and some of them were even dumber than I was, and even the ones who were smarter weren't using their smarts for things I necessarily considered worthwhile.

Teenagers are philosophers. They are thinking about the big things like existence and identity at a time when their identities are changing so fast.

Sometimes you have to mature.

I grew up a lot by going to college. I was still really immature.

When you're in your twenties, your brain hasn't even finished baking, and your hormones are giving you all kinds of direction of which ways to go.

When you make bad decisions bad things happen. And it was so simple. You know, the decisions you make are going to become the life that you live!

Childhood and adolescence are nothing but milestones: You grow taller, advance to new grades, and get your period, your driver's license, and your diploma. Then, in your 20s and 30s, you romance potential partners, find jobs, and learn to support yourself.

I had my crisis at 30. I was actually really comfortable with 40. Life was in a better place.