A Spot of Bother Quotes

“And it occurred to him that there were two parts to being a better person. One part was thinking about other people. The other part was not giving a toss what other people thought.”
― Mark Haddon, A Spot of Bother

“What they failed to teach you at school was that the whole business of being human just got messier and more complicated as you got older. You could tell the truth, be polite, take everyone's feelings into consideration and still have to deal with other people's shit. At nine or ninety.”
― Mark Haddon, A Spot of Bother

“You love someone, you've got to let something go.”
― Mark Haddon, A Spot of Bother

“At twenty life was like wrestling an octopus. Every moment mattered. At thirty it was a walk in the country. Most of the time your mind was somewhere else. By the time you got to seventy, it was probably like watching snooker on the telly.”
― Mark Haddon, A Spot of Bother

“... He had always rather liked emergencies. Other people's at any rate. They put your own problems into perspective. It was like being on a ferry. You didn't have to think about what you had to do or where you had to go for the next few hours. It was all laid out for you.”
― Mark Haddon, A Spot of Bother

“He really did not care whether he survived or not, so long as it rendered him unconscious and absolved him of responsibility.”
― Mark Haddon, A Spot of Bother

“That was the problem, wasn't it? You left home. But you never did become an adult. Not really. You just fucked up in different and more complicated ways.”
― Mark Haddon, A Spot of Bother

“The secret of contentment lay in ignoring many things completely.”
― Mark Haddon, A Spot of Bother

“He’d tried celibacy. The only problem was the lack of sex.”
― Mark Haddon, A Spot of Bother

“It exasperated her sometimes. The way men could be so sure of themselves. They put words together like sheds or shelves and you could stand on them they were so solid. And those feelings which overwhelmed you in the small hours turned to smoke.”
― Mark Haddon, A Spot of Bother

“That was what it meant, didn’t it. Being good. You didn’t have to sink wells in Burkina Faso. You didn’t have to give away your coffee table. You just had to see things from other people’s point of view. Remember they were human.”
― Mark Haddon, A Spot of Bother

“You could say all you liked about reason and logic and common sense and imagination, but when the chips were down the one skill you needed was the ability to think about absolutely nothing whatsoever.”
― Mark Haddon, A Spot of Bother

“At teenage parties he was always wandering into the garden, sitting on a bench in the dark . . . staring up at the constellations and pondering all those big questions about the existence of God and the nature of evil and the mystery of death, questions which seemed more important than anything else in the would until a few years passed and some real questions had been dumped into your lap, like how to earn a living, and why people fell in and out of love, and how long you could carry on smoking and then give up without getting lung cancer.”
― Mark Haddon, A Spot of Bother

“It was true. There really was no limit to the ways in which you could say the wrong thing to your children. You offered an olive branch and it was the wrong olive branch at the wrong time.”
― Mark Haddon, A Spot of Bother

“Everything seemed suspended, in some kind of balance. Obviously someone would come along and fuck it up, because that's what other people did.”
― Mark Haddon, A Spot of Bother

“He had always thought of solitary diners as sad. But now that he was the solitary diner, he felt rather superior. On account of the book, mostly. Learning something while everyone else was wasting time. Like working at night.”
― Mark Haddon, A Spot of Bother

“How often did he feel it now, this gorgeous, furtive seclusion? In the bath sometimes, maybe. Though Jean failed to understand his need for periodic isolation and regularly dragged him back to earth mid-soak by hammering on the locked door in search of bleach or dental floss.”
― Mark Haddon, A Spot of Bother

“She idly stroked his head in the way one might stroke a dog.”
― Mark Haddon, A Spot of Bother

“Perhaps the secret was to stop looking for greener grass. Perhaps the secret was to make the best of what you had.”
― Mark Haddon, A Spot of Bother

“Maybe the answers weren’t important. Maybe it was the asking which mattered. Not taking anything for granted. Maybe that’s what stopped you growing old.”
― Mark Haddon, A Spot of Bother

“Maybe George was fooling himself. Maybe old people always fooled themselves, pretending that the world was going to hell because it was easier than admitting they were being left behind, that the future was pulling away from the beach and they were standing on their little island bidding it good riddance, knowing in their hearts that there was nothing left for them to do but sit around on the shingle waiting for the big disease to come out of the undergrowth.”
― Mark Haddon, A Spot of Bother

“The secret of contentment, George felt, lay in ignoring many things completely. How anyone could work in the same office for ten years or bring up children without putting certain things to the back of their mind was beyond him.”
― Mark Haddon, A Spot of Bother

“Sarebbe morto.

Forse non questo mese, forse non quest’anno. Ma in qualche modo, in qualche momento, e in una maniera e a una velocità indipendenti dalle sue preferenze.

Sembrò che il pavimento fosse scomparso mostrando un vasto pozzo spalancato sotto il soggiorno.

Con chiarezza accecante, capí che tutti facevano capriole su di un prato estivo circondato da una foresta oscura e impenetrabile, in attesa del giorno sinistro in cui sarebbero stati tratti nel buio di là dagli alberi e macellati uno a uno.

Come aveva fatto, per Dio, a non accorgersene prima? E come mai gli altri non se ne accorgevano? Come mai non venivano trovati raggomitolati e ululanti sul pavimento? Come mai procedevano bel belli lungo i giorni, ignari di questo fatto indigeribile? E, una volta che la verità era apparsa, com’era possibile dimenticare?

Ora, inspiegabilmente, si trovava carponi fra la poltrona e il televisore e si dondolava avanti e indietro, e cercava di consolarsi facendo il verso della mucca.”
― Mark Haddon, A Spot of Bother

“It was true. There really was no limit to the ways in which you could say the wrong thing to your children. You offered an olive branch and it was the wrong olive branch at the wrong time. “Well?”
― Mark Haddon, A Spot of Bother

“Loving someone means taking the risk that they might fuck up your nicely ordered little life. And you don’t want to fuck up your nicely ordered little life, do you?”
― Mark Haddon, A Spot of Bother

“But you reached a stage where you realized it was a waste of energy trying to change your parents’ minds about anything, ever.”
― Mark Haddon, A Spot of Bother

“Sweet mother if God thought George, surely this was not going to involve him? "George"? It was.”
― Mark Haddon, A Spot of Bother

“Never trust a man who doesn't like animals. That's my rule.”
― Mark Haddon, A Spot of Bother

“At home he was reading Pet Sematary, but reading that in public was like leaving the house in your underwear.”
― Mark Haddon, A Spot of Bother

“School might have been shit, but at least it was simple.”
― Mark Haddon, A Spot of Bother