The Red House Quotes

“One person looks around and sees a universe created by a god who watches over its long unfurling, marking the fall of sparrows and listening to the prayers of his finest creation. Another person believes that life, in all its baroque complexity, is a chemical aberration that will briefly decorate the surface of a ball of rock spinning somewhere among a billion galaxies. And the two of them could talk for hours and find no great difference between one another, for neither set of beliefs make us kinder or wiser.”
― Mark Haddon, The Red House

“It wasn't about believing this or that, it wasn't even about good and evil and right and wrong, it was about finding the strength to bear the discomfort that came with being in the world.”
― Mark Haddon, The Red House

“You could ask for hugs if you were feeling sad or you'd hurt yourself, but when it happened spontaneously it made you feel warm inside.”
― Mark Haddon, The Red House

“...companionship refused is worse than loneliness.”
― Mark Haddon, The Red House

“How pleased we are to have our eyes opened but how easily we close them again.”
― Mark Haddon, The Red House

“Places remained and time flowed through them like wind through the grass. Right now. This was the future turning into the past. One thing becoming another. Like a flame on the end of a match. Wood turning into smoke. If only we could burn brighter. A barn roaring in the night.”
― Mark Haddon, The Red House

“Maybe it wasn't God after all, maybe it was the heart which punished one with such exquisite accuracy.”
― Mark Haddon, The Red House

“How do you remember this stuff? But why had she forgotten? That was the real question.”
― Mark Haddon, The Red House

“Which was what she hated about the countryside, no distraction from the dirty messed-up workings of the heart.”
― Mark Haddon, The Red House

“Her only worry sometimes was that she didn’t look different enough, that people mistook her for part of a crowd. She’d see a girl in patterned Doc Martens or with a dyed red pixie cut and wish she had the balls.”
― Mark Haddon, The Red House

“She thought about the men with bows and arrows. They were really here, weren’t they, once upon a time. And mammoths and ladies in crinolines and Spitfires overhead. Places remained and time flowed through them like wind through the grass. Right now. This was the future turning into the past. One thing becoming another thing. Like a flame on the end of a match. Wood turning into smoke. If only we could burn brighter. A barn roaring in the night.”
― Mark Haddon, The Red House

“Come devono essere tristi, quei figli unici. Crescere in una casa piena di adulti, sempre in minoranza, sempre sconfitti, nemmeno un po' di quella stupidità sfrenata, niente scherzi da poter ripetere cento volte, nessuno con cui cantare, nessuno con cui litigare, nessuno con cui fare il principe, o lo schiavo [...] in seguito, quando i genitori cadono in disgrazia e diventano essere umani incasinati e banali e si trasformano pian piano da persone che si prendono cura di te in individui di cui ci si deve prendere cura, chi ci sarà ad affrontare con te quelle crescenti frustrazioni, a riflettere sulle migliaia di dettagli insignificanti di quella soap opera a lungo condivisa che non significa nulla per gli altri? E quando infine se ne saranno andati, chi si rivolgerà a te dicendoti: «Sì, mi ricordo il cavalluccio a dondolo rosso... sì, mi ricordo il letto immaginario sotto il biancospino»?”
― Mark Haddon, The Red House

“It wasn’t about believing this or that, it wasn’t about good and evil and right and wrong, it was about finding the strength to bear the discomfort that came with being in the world.”
― Mark Haddon, The Red House

“Eventually we find that we no longer need silence. We no longer need solitude. We no longer even need words. We can make all our actions holy. We can cook a meal for our family and it becomes prayer. We can go for a walk in the park and it becomes prayer.”
― Mark Haddon, The Red House

“People disappear, leaving only bodies that flicker on and off in beds in time with the steady toggle of the dark.”
― Mark Haddon, The Red House

“None of them were greatly interested in the election except as a national soap opera in which the closeness of the result was more exciting than the identity of the winner. Individually, they were passionate about GP fundholding, academy schools, asylum, but none of them trusted any party to keep a promise about any of these issues. Louisa struggled to believe that she could change herself, let alone the world.”
― Mark Haddon, The Red House

“And it came to Daisy out of the blue. Her mother was a human being. How rarely she saw it.”
― Mark Haddon, The Red House

“Ich weinte, weil ich keine Schuhe hatte, bis ich einen traf, der keine Füße hatte.”
― Mark Haddon, The Red House

“Wie ist das jetzt mit der Religion bei dir? Es war nicht Neid. Eher eine Art zoologische Faszination.”
― Mark Haddon, The Red House

“Vergeben und vergessen. Langsam verstand sie, was das hieß. Man konnte nicht vergessen, bevor nicht jemand anderes einem vergab.”
― Mark Haddon, The Red House

“Glauben ist das Vertrauen ins Unmögliche.”
― Mark Haddon, The Red House

“Es ging darum, die nötige Stärke zu finden, um das Unwohlsein zu ertragen, das es mit sich brachte, auf dieser Welt zu sein.”
― Mark Haddon, The Red House

“One person looks around and see a universe created by a God who watches over its long unfurling, marking the fall of sparrows and listening to the prayers of his finest creation. Another person believes that life, in all its baroque complexity, is a chemical aberration that will briefly decorate the surface of a ball of rock spinning somewhere among a billion galaxies. And the two of them could talk for hours and find no greater difference between each other, for neither set of beliefs makes us kinder or wiser.

William the Bastard forcing Harold to swear over the bones of Saint Jerome, the Church of Rome rent asunder by the King's Great Matter, the twin towers folding into smoke. Religion fueling the turns and reverses of human history, or so it seems, but twist them all to catch a different light and those same passionate beliefs seem no more than banners thrown up to hide the usual engines of greed and fear. And in our single lives? Those smaller turns and reverses? Is it religion which trammels and frees, which gives or withholds hope? Or are these, too, those old base motives dressed up for a Sunday morning? Are they reasons or excuses?”
― Mark Haddon, The Red House

“Family, that slippery word, a star to every wandering bark, and everyone sailing under a different sky.”
― Mark Haddon, The Red House

“Melissa popped open the clattery little Rotring tin. Pencils, putty rubber, scalpel. She sharpened a 3B, letting the curly shavings fall into the wicker bin, then paused for a few seconds, finding a little place of stillness before starting to draw the flowers. Art didn't count at school because it didn't get you into law or banking or medicine. It was just a fluffy thing stuck to the side of Design and Technology, a free A level for kids who could do it, like a second language, but she loved charcoal and really good gouache, she loved rolling sticky black ink on to a lino plate and heaving on the big black arm of the Cope press, the quiet and those big white walls.”
― Mark Haddon, The Red House

“Maybe it was the heart which punished one with such exquisite accuracy.”
― Mark Haddon, The Red House

“Water purling between the rocks, weed under the surface like green hair in the wind.”
― Mark Haddon, The Red House

“Everyone in their little worlds.”
― Mark Haddon, The Red House

“It wasn’t about believing this or that, it wasn’t bout good and evil and right and wrong, it was about finding the strength to bear the discomfort that came with being in the world.”
― Mark Haddon, The Red House

“All those other lives. You never did get to lead them.”
― Mark Haddon, The Red House