Mark Haddon Quotes

What a mysterious thing madness is. I have watched patients whose lips are forever sealed in a perpetual silence. They live, breathe, eat; the human form is there, but that something, which the body can live without, but which cannot exist without the body, was missing.

I'm not a nutcase. I know that.

People say I make strange choices, but they're not strange for me. My sickness is that I'm fascinated by human behavior, by what's underneath the surface, by the worlds inside people.

What do we mean by 'crazy?' What do we mean by 'mad?' At what point is a person just different and at what point can we call it a disease and say that they are not responsible for their actions? Or are we all slaves to the chemical processes that go on in our brains?

There is a pleasure in being mad which none but madmen know.

There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad.

There are things that tend to moderate with age. Schizophrenia is somewhat like that.

My mom worked as a psychiatric social worker. She was interested in people, and I guess I am, too. So we would talk about the people that we knew, and why they behaved the way they did.

I'm a nut case, but that is what I believe.

Well, many insane people and seriously mentally ill people seem very reasonable.

Most men are within a finger's breadth of being mad.

I was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADD/ADHD) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) as an adult, but I don't remember a time when I didn't have them. Back in the 1960s, when I was growing up, my symptoms didn't have a name, and you didn't go to the doctor to find out.

England is nothing but the last ward of the European madhouse, and quite possibly it will prove to be the ward for particularly violent cases.

I'm crazy, but I'm not too crazy.

Insane people are always sure that they are fine. It is only the sane people who are willing to admit that they are crazy.

I've never had any problem with crazy people. I like crazy people; I probably am a crazy person myself.

There's a fine line between genius and insanity, as we all know.

Possibly he knew, as he wrote this, that he was mad - because inside every madman sits a little sane man saying 'You're mad, you're mad.'

I am not a madman or a nut.

So long as man is protected by madness - he functions - and flourishes.

It is surely a great calamity for a human being to have no obsessions.

I'm not a madman.

People think I'm nuts.

There is only one difference between a madman and me. The madman thinks he is sane. I know I am mad.

I'll say it loud and say it proud. I'm completely insane.