Mark Haddon

Je pense que les gens croient au paradis parce qu’ils n’ont pas envie de mourir, parce qu’ils veulent continuer à vivre et qu’ils n’ont pas envie que d’autres gens s’installent dans leur maison et jettent leurs affaires à la poubelle.

And Mother shouted, « I wrote to him every week. Every week. »
And Father shouted, « Wrote to him ? What the fuck use is writing to him ? »
And Mr Shears shouted, « Whoa, whoa, whoa. »
And Father shouted, « I coocked his meals. I cleaned his clothes. I looked after him every weekend. I looked after him when he was ill. I took him to the doctor. I worried myself sick every time he wandered off somewhere at night. I went to school every time he got into a fight. And you ? What ? You wrote him some fucking letters. »

At 2:07 a.m. I decided that I wanted a drink of orange squash before I brushed my teeth and got into bed so I went downstairs to the kitchen. Father was sitting on the sofa watching snooker on the television and drinking whisky. There were tears coming out of his eyes.
I asked, « Are you sad about Wellington ? »
He looked at me for a long time and sucked air in through his nose. Then he said, « Yes, Christopher, you could say that. You could very well say that. »
I decided to leave him alone because when I am sad I want to be left alone. So I didn’t say anything else. I just went into the kitchen and made my orange squash and took it back upstairs to my room.

Quand on regarde le ciel, on sait qu’on voit des étoiles qui se trouvent à des centaines et des milliers d’années lumières de nous. Certaines n’existent même plus, parce que leur lumière a mis si longtemps à parvenir jusqu’à nous qu’elles sont déjà mortes, ou qu’elles ont explosé et se sont désintégrées en naines rouges. Alors on se sent tout petit et, quand il y a des choses difficiles dans la vie, ça fait du bien de penser qu’elles sont ce qu’on appelle négligeables, ce qui veut dire qu’elles sont si petites qu’on n’a pas à en tenir compte quand on fait un calcul.

Les gens pensent qu'ils ne sont pas comme des ordinateurs parce qu'ils ont des sentiments et que les ordinateurs n'ont pas de sentiments. Avoir des sentiments, c'est simplement projeter sur l'écran qu'on a dans la tête une image de ce qui va se passer le lendemain ou l'année prochaine, ou de ce qui aurait pu se passer à la place de ce qui s'est vraiment passė, et si l'image est joyeuse, on sourit et si elle est triste, on pleure.

Mentir, c' est dire que quelque chose s'est passé alors que ça ne s'est pas passé. En fait, il ne s'est passé qu' une chose à un moment donné et en un lieu donné. Et il y a un nombre infini de choses qui ne se sont pas passées à ce moment-là et à cet endroit-là. Si je pense à quelque chose qui ne s' est pas passé, je me mets à penser à toutes les autres choses qui ne se sont pas passées. [...] C'est aussi une des raisons pour lesquelles je n'aime pas les vrais romans : ils racontent des mensonges sur des choses qui ne se sont pas passées, alors ça me fait tourner la tête et ça me fait peur.
C'est pour ça que tout ce que j'ai écrit ici est vrai.

Et puis j'ai dit que je m'intéresse aux chiens parce qu'ils sont fidèles et francs et qu'il y en a qui sont plus intelligents et plus attachants que certaines personnes. Steve, par exemple, qui vient à l'école le jeudi ne sait pas manger tout seul et il ne serait même pas capable d'aller chercher un bâton. Siobhan m'a demandé de ne pas dire ça à la mère de Steve

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.

p.148

And people who believe in God think God has put human beings on the earth because they think human beings are the best animal, but 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. Or human beings will all catch a disease and die out or they will make too much pollution and kill themselves, and then there will only be insects in the world and they will be the best animal.

p.204

And this means that time is a mystery, and 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.
And this is why I like timetables because they make sure you don't get lost in time.

p.195

And sometimes, when someone has died, like Mother died, people say, "What would you want to say to your mother if she was here now ?" or "What would your mother think about that ?", which is stupid because Mother is dead and you can't say anything to people who are dead and dead people can't think.
And Grandmother has pictures in her head, too, but her pictures are all confused, like someone has muddled the film up and she can't tell what happened in what order, so she thinks that dead people are still alive and she doesn't know whether something happened in real life or wether it happened on television.

And when the universe has finished exploding all the stars will slow down, like a ball that has been thrown into the air, and they will come to a halt and they will all begin to fall towards the centre of the universe again. And then there will be nothing to stop us seeing all the stars in the world because they will all be moving towards us, gradually faster and faster, and we will know that the world is going to end soon because when we look up into the sky at night there will be no darkness, just the blazing light of billions and billions of stars, all falling.
Except that no one will see this because there will be no people left on the earth to see it. They will probably have become extinct by then. And even if there are people still in existence they will not see it because the light will be so bright and hot that everyone will be burnt to death, even if they live in tunnels.

Mother used to stay 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.

p.20

What actually happens when you die is that your brain stops working and your body rots, like Rabbit did when he died and we buried him in the earth at the bottom of the garden. And all his molecules were broken down into other molecules and they went into the earth and were eaten by worms and went into the plants and if we go and dig in the same place in 10 years there will be nothing except his skelton left. And in 1,000 years even this skelton will be gone. But that is all right because he is a part of the flowers and the apple tree and the hawthorn bush now.
When people die they are sometimes put into coffins which means that they don't mix with the earth for a very long time until the wood of the coffin rots.
But Mother was cremated. This means that she was put into a coffin and burnt 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 were molecules of Mother up there, or in clouds over Africa or the Antartic, or coming down as rain in the rainforests in Brazil, or in snow somewhere.

p.44

On the fifth day, which was a Sunday, it rains very hard. I like it when it rains hard. It sounds like white noise everywhere, which is like silence but not empty.

p.129

Je trouve les gens déconcertants.
Pour deux raisons essentielles.
La première raison essentielle est qu'ils parlent beaucoup sans se servir de mots. Siobhan dit que si on lève un sourcil, ça peut signifier plusieurs choses différentes. Ca peut signifier "J'ai envie d'avoir des relations sexuelles avec toi" mais aussi "Je trouve que ce que tu viens de dire est complétement idiot".

Il a levé la main droite et a écarté ses doigts en éventail. J’ai levé la main droite et j’ai écarté mes doigts en éventail et nous nous sommes touché les doigts et les pouces. Nous faisons ça parce que des fois, Père a envie de me serrer dans ses bras, mais moi, je n’aime pas ça, alors nous nous touchons les doigts à la place et ça veut dire qu’il m’aime.

I sometimes think of my mind as a machine […] It makes it easier to explain to other people what is going on inside it.

When I am still awake at three or four in the morning and I can walk up and down the street and pretend that I am the only perso in the whole world.

dogs were clever and more interesting than some people.