Mark Haddon Quotes

It's very challenging to learn something new as an adult.

You get the feeling that many of my guests feel that the French language gives them entry into a more cultivated, more intelligent world, more highly civilised too, with rules.

It's really difficult for me. Language, I am sorry that I haven't. I think I just always expected that you learn a word in place of a word and when I discovered how difficult the grammar was and learning that was very discouraging for me.

I'm not exactly an example of how to learn English; I just can't get it into my head. I'm learning hardly anything, truth be told.

Remember that, however patient your study, you will never in adult life learn any language perfectly; the best you can hope for is to be a bore.

It's a complicated process being so bilingual. Sometimes it's a mere word or sentence that comes to me, if I'm writing the book in English, in French. It's not always easy to deal with. Sometimes even during an interview somebody can ask me a question in English that I want to answer in French and vice versa - that's the story of my life!

French is a foreign language, but I've been speaking it since I was 18 so it's second nature to me.

I have a good ear for languages.

I learned French in Tunis, along with Arabic. I also learned French history. I knew the entire history of the kings of France. And I was fascinated by Versailles.

My first public impression was my French teacher, Derek Swift.

Columbia University, where I went to study in 1993, insisted its undergraduates learn a foreign language, so I discovered French.

When I started writing, the first thing that came out was in English. I liked a few French things, but they were very overwhelming.

My father's really fluent in French, but I can't speak at all. I actually took it twice in school already and failed both times!

What makes this story so remarkable is that throughout my early childhood I had ongoing learning difficulties, particularly in mathematics. I struggled to learn the multiplication table, and no matter how hard I tried, I simply couldn't remember 6 times 7 or 7 times 8.

I don't ever want to stop learning. And I really want to learn French fluently. It would be great to go and live in France.

My parents are both Belgian-born, and so am I, actually. I'm bilingual, so I had experience with French.

If your kids attend school and grades are up that will make $1,000 contributions to some 10,000 kids across the country, are challenging kids to learn foreign languages or challenging kids to get summer jobs or seek summer enrichment opportunities?

I'm pretty good with languages.

I wish that I spoke more languages. I speak a couple languages, but not well enough to really dub myself. French is really the only one, and it's a difficult thing.

I learned my French through school. I was lucky in that the tutor on 'The Wonder Years' set spoke fluent French.

Man is multiplied by the number of languages he possesses and speaks.

I took about four or five years of French in high school, but I definitely don't speak French as well as I thought I did then.

I lived in Paris for two years with my family. I would roam the streets of Paris during the day for a few hours in the subway, on the streets, and I listened to the French language, and I got a sense of the rhythm and the melody of the language.

After years of studying French in school, one of my professors said he'd really appreciate it if I didn't take any more French.

I was a bad student. My teachers gave up trying to teach me how to read music.