As to the number of novels ...

As to the number of novels I\'ve abandoned... I shudder to think. I have thrown away five completed novels, and that\'s a gruesome enough figure. But not necessarily a waste of effort.
As to the number of novels I've abandoned... I shudder to think. I have thrown away five completed novels, and that's a gruesome enough figure. But not necessarily a waste of effort.
 Mark Haddon

More phrases

Being self-made is a state of mind, and once you put that mentality to work, your success will come.
 Dave East
A lot of people change for good. Some people just fall off. Just trying to progress in anything, no matter what you're doing, I feel like any progression you make... some people aren't gonna be around you that were around you.
 Dave East
We are in a survival mentality, and that's hard-wired into our humanity, because we are the winners of an evolutionary struggle of millions and millions and millions of years.
 John Shelby Spong
I've always had the mentality of: work hard, get to bed early, focus - and let your work speak for itself.
 Olivia Palermo
If a warrior is to succeed at anything, the success must come gently, with a great deal of effort but with no stress or obsession.

Quotes from the same author

Mother used to say 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.
 Mark Haddon
I do not tell lies. Mother used to say that this was because I was a good person. But it is not because I am a good person. It is because I do not tell lie.
 Mark Haddon
But I don't feel sad about it. Because Mother is dead. And because Mr. Shears isn't around anymore. So I would be feeling sad about something that isn't real and doesn't exist. And that would be stupid.
 Mark Haddon
Stories about mental aberration and oddity only make sense in context. Just how do people live with someone who is peculiar, gifted, strange or alien? It's odd because there's a little part of me that wants to write about exotic, strange bizarre subjects. Instead, I've rather reluctantly realised that what I write about is families.
 Mark Haddon
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