Being Boring Quotes & Sayings

Nobody is perfect, so get over the fear of being or doing everything perfectly. Besides perfect is boring. — Jillian Michaels

For whatever it is worth, I never believed Wickham's stories of maltreatment at your hands. Other than being a rather boring, disagreeable fellow, I did not think you so dishonorable that you would go against your father's wishes. — KaraLynne Mackrory

Dad always told me I was good at noticing moments, at appreciating the little things in life. It struck me as an odd thing, being good at noticing moments. Moments, in and of themselves, were actually pretty boring little bits of time. For most people, they were like confetti or snowflakes; they didn't amount to much until they were in groups. I think I was the opposite. I avoided the groups, the mounds of confetti or snow that had built up in my life, because I was more frightened of what those mounds might tell me to do.
I lived in the now so I didn't have to move forward. — Kim Culbertson

Fame is a lot of fun, but it's not interesting. I loved being noticed and praised, even the banquets. But they didn't have anything that I wanted. After about six months, I found it boring. — Jack Gilbert

The gods demand entertainment. They demand trial and contest. We could not be allowed to defeat our own daemons, for that would be boring, and boredom is the only thing the eternals fear. We are being lined up, one by one, to tear at each other's throats. I do not think they wish to see a victor. I think they wish us to fight forever, locked in madness until the universe's end — Chris Wraight

If you're going to die, die interesting! Is there anything worse than a boring death? (Other than a Charlie Rose marathon on PBS?) I think not. When my time comes I'm going to go out in high style. I have no intention of being sick or lingering or dragging on and on and boring everyone I know. — Joan Rivers

The moral is plain. Avoid, if possible, being bored yourself or boring others. — Aldous Huxley

Being normal is boring! — Marilyn Monroe

Oh, that's just Thud! That's easy!" yapped a voice.
Both men turned to look at Horsefry, who had been made perky by sheer relief.
"I used to play it when I was a kid," he burbled. It's boring. The dwarfs always win!"
Gilt and Vetinari shared a look. It said: While I loathe you and every aspect of your personal philosophy to a depth unplummable by any line, I'll credit you at least with not being Crispin Horsefry. — Terry Pratchett

I'm about being funny. If I can make a joke using profanity, I will. But for the most part, that can get awfully old and boring. — Howard Stern

When I was a kid, the avant-garde to me was boring because it was just the flip side of being really successful. — Twyla Tharp

She thought that when she went with Peter to an engineers' party, the atmosphere was pleasant though the talk was boring. That was because everybody had their importance fixed and settled at least for the time being. Here nobody was safe. Judgment might be passed behind backs, even on the known and published. An air of cleverness or nerves obtained, no matter who you were. — Alice Munro

To think about and prepare for war is boring, boring for everyone. It's being locked in barracks. — Natalie Clifford Barney

The whole idea of punk rock is that you're dressing yourself in a crazy leather jacket with safety pins and a Mohawk. The idea of being the rebel is a boring societal idea. It's such a type. And that's what I was, without knowing it. — Michael Ian Black

It's better being completely ridiculous than unbelievably boring. — Marilyn Monroe

I run my company according to feminine principles, principles of caring, making intuitive decisions, not getting hung up on hierarchy or all those dreadfully boring business-school management ideas; having a sense of work as being part of your life, not separate from it; putting your labor where your love is; being responsible to the world in how you use your profits; recognizing the bottom line should stay at the bottom. — Anita Roddick

What an immature, self-destructive, antiquated mischief is man! How obscure and gross his prancing and chattering on his little stage of evolution! How loathsome and beyond words boring all the thoughts and self-approval of his biological by-product! this half-formed, ill-conditioned body! this erratic, maladjusted mechanism of his soul: on one side the harmonious instincts and balanced responses of the animal, on the other the inflexible purpose of the engine, and between them man, equally alien from the being of Nature and the doing of the machine, the vile becoming! — Evelyn Waugh

For myself, I like a universe that, includes much that is unknown and, at the same time, much that is knowable. A universe in which everything is known would be static and dull, as boring as the heaven of some weak-minded theologians. A universe that is unknowable is no fit place for a thinking being. The ideal universe for us is one very much like the universe we inhabit. And I would guess that this is not really much of a coincidence. — Carl Sagan

Never fear being vulgar, just boring, middle class or dull. — Diana Vreeland

Some fighter's waist a lot of their energy. Wait for your opportunity and when it comes, avail yourself of it. The idea of boring in and throwing punches helter skelter without reason doesn't amount to a row of pins. Every time you miss a swing it is worse than being hit. — Jack Johnson

I think it is effective to constrict your anus 100 times, dent your navel 100 times in succession everyday. You can do so at a boring meeting or in a subway without being noticed for you to do so. I have known 70 year old man who has practiced it for 20 years. As a result, he has good complexion and has grown 20 years younger. His eyes sparkle. He is full of vigor, happiness, and joy. He has neither complained nor born a grudge under any circumstance. — Hiroyuki Nishigaki

All the real blokes I know are obsessed with cars and have started doing cycling at the weekend and being really, really boring about it and banging on about their Fitbits and growing stupid beards and talking about being on Tinder. That's what all the 'real men' are like these days! — Jenny Colgan

They are afraid to read out loud, fearful of being thought stupid or foolish or - what? I ask them. Girlish? Boring, says one Megan. (Which Megan? I can't remember.) This is a terrible fear, I know - this fear of not being interesting - of being trivial, not special. It is almost as great, I think, as their fear of standing out and being special. — Sallie Tisdale

What's wrong with being a boring kind of guy? — George H. W. Bush

Going before an audience of people who expect you to be funny is tough. Going before an audience that expect you to be boring, and then being a little funny, is much easier. I prefer easier. — Barney Frank

What do you want? You can't want to be happy, because that's too easy and too boring. You can't want only to love, because that's impossible. What do you want? You want to justify your life, to live it as intensely as possible. That is at once a trap and a source of ecstasy. Try to be alert to that danger and experience the joy and the adventure of being that woman who is beyond the image reflected in the mirror. — Paulo Coelho

There are lots of real reasons to decide to leave something or someone, but there are lots of other reasons that are less valid and less real and less about a relationship than our own minds: Fear (of screwing up, of being left, of not being good enough), restlessness, resistance to growing up, PMS, not knowing how to live without drama, fearing that you're getting happy, and happiness is boring.
The thing that scared me the most was the knowledge that if I stayed, something was going to change, and that something was probably me. I didn't know what changed me would look like, or if I would like her more or less than I already did. Would I still recognize myself? Would I still be myself? — Anna White

Think about George Orwell's three-minute hate from the novel '1984' and how that left everyone sort of exhausted and able to live their boring humdrum lives. If our lives are going to continue being unfulfilled and boring, perhaps we do need some sort of short-term violent chaos incorporated into them, to make them more palatable. — Chuck Palahniuk

When a writer develops a story, he is confronted with a poison that is inside him. If you don't have that poison, your story will be boring and uninspired. It's like fugu: The flesh of the pufferfish is extremely tasty, but the roe, the liver, the heart can be lethally toxic. My stories are located in a dark, dangerous part of my consciousness, I feel the poison in my mind, but I can fend off a high dose of it because I have a strong body. When you are young, you are strong; so you can usually conquer the poison even without being in training. But beyond the age of 40 your strength wanes, you can no longer cope with the poison if you lead an unhealthy life. — Haruki Murakami

Being vulgar is fine, but oh please just don't be boring. — Diana Vreeland

I don't have any special passion for politics, it being a never-ending merry-go-round of bosses big and small, all generally mediocre. I actually find it boring. — Elena Ferrante

The best defence [for a democracy, for the public good] is aggressiveness, the aggressiveness of the involved citizen. We need to reassert that slow, time-consuming, inefficient, boring process that requires our involvement; it is called 'being a citizen.' The public good is not something that you can see. It is not static. It is a process. It is the process by which democratic civilizations build themselves. — John Ralston Saul

Being perfect is boring. It's the imperfections that make us perfect. — Jessie J.

The things we always disengage with are one-sided stories or one-sided characters. They're very boring. When you feel like you're being hit over the head, you disengage. — John Krasinski

Some of the most radical work is being done in the most commercially pop venues, and some of the most boring work is being done in avant-garde territory. — Harmony Korine

Everyone tries to be an optimist. But being an optimist is a bit boring and not honest. Losers are more interesting than winners. — Xiaolu Guo

You are a man. You are an average, lazy, boring, cowardly, woman-fearing man. Without me, that's what you would have kept on being, ad nauseam. But I made you into something. You were the best man you've ever been with me. And you know it. The only time in your life you've ever liked yourself was pretending to be someone I might like. — Gillian Flynn

Your pony, he said as he stomped toward me. "I'm the farrier who is here to fix your pony."
"I thought you were a Hells Angel," I said.
"I used to be," he replied. "But fighting all the time and being really drunk and nasty got boring. So now I just take care of animals. — Jack Gantos

Talk to them about things they don't know. Try to give them an inferiority complex. If the actress is beautiful, screw her. If she isn't, present her with a valuable painting she will not understand. If they insist on being boring, kick their asses or twist their noses. And that's about all there is to it. — John Huston

Doing anything when you're bored is very very boring. Anyway, doing nothing is the point of being bored. The pleasure of being bored is mooning about and doing nothing. — Aidan Chambers

There's nothing worse than being bored with a boring man. — Antoine Laurain

So the challenge, as you contemplate your next opportunity to be boring or remarkable, is to answer these two questions: (1) "If I get criticized for this, will I suffer any measurable impact? Will I lose my job, get hit upside the head with a softball bat, or lose important friendships?" If the only side effect of the criticism is that you will feel bad about the criticism, then you have to compare that bad feeling with the benefits you'll get from actually doing something worth doing. Being remarkable is exciting, fun, profitable, and great for your career. Feeling bad wears off.
And then, once you've compared the bad feeling and the benefits, and you've sold yourself on taking the remarkable path, answer this one: (2) How can I create something that critics will criticize? — Seth Godin

There! I can't fix the whole country, and it will only last a few days, but I present you with the sun, on behalf of my dreadfully boring magic.
He bows low, holding out his hand. I reach out tentatively, afraid of being burned, but the globe merely hovers above my hand where I slide it on top of Finn's. It's golden and deliciously warm and instantly makes me happier and more at ease than I've been in weeks.
I laugh, delighted, and by the look on Finn's face you'd think I was the one who had given him an absurd and wonderful gift. — Kiersten White

Zazen, on the other hand, is kind of the opposite of sex in that it's really, really boring. And, honestly speaking, most of our lives are pretty boring. So if you want to learn how to be fully present for most of what goes on, it's better to try and do so by concentrating on a really boring activity rather than on a really exciting one ... To find the way of being fully engaged in doing the dishes, you might want to try becoming fully engaged in something way more boring than doing dishes. This is why zazen is so desperately dull. — Brad Warner

The secret of being a bore is to tell everything. — Voltaire

Being boring is just wrong, isn't it? You wouldn't have got anywhere being boring. — Rachel Johnson

Well, yeah. Aren't you? I want to destroy anyone who has hurt you for a dumb reason like just being yourself. What? Do we want the entire universe made up of people who are all clones of each other? How damn boring would that be? You know the expression that love makes the world go 'round? That might be true, but love comes from the way differences interact. How personalities interact. How we bounce off of each other, challenge each other, and how we push and pull. It's through those tensions that we connect with others and with ourselves. And it's how we fall in love. Because there is magic in diversity. Without the Celestes, the world wouldn't go 'round. Do you see that? — Jessica Park

The boring thing about being interesting is that you bore boring people. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Why is one a slave to thought ? Why has thought become so important in all our lives -thought being ideas, being the response to the accumulated memories in the brain cells? Perhaps many of you have not even asked such a question before, or if you have you may have said, "it's of very little importance- what is important is emotion." But I don't see how you can separate the two. If thought does not give continuity to feeling, feeling dies very quickly. So why in our daily lives, in our grinding, boring, frightened lives, has thought taken on such inordinate importance? — Jiddu Krishnamurti

People who interfered in your life always did it for your own good and I figured it out finally that what they wanted was for you to conform completely and never differ from some accepted surface standard and then dissipate the way traveling salesmen would at a convention in every stupid and boring way there was. They knew nothing of our pleasures nor how much fun it was to be damned to ourselves and never would know nor could know. Our pleasures, which were those of being in love, were as simple and still as mysterious and complicated as a simple mathematical formula that can mean all happiness or can mean the end of the world. That is the sort of happiness you should not tinker with but nearly everyone you knew tried to adjust. — Ernest Hemingway,

I don't want to know what's going to happen. As frightening as that is in real life, it's a crucial aspect in creativity. Being predictable is boring, and it's also disheartening and usinspiring. — Carrie Brownstein

What's the one superpower of June Elbus?"
I thought about myself from head to toe. It was like being forced to read the most boring part of the Sears catalog. Like leafing through the bathroom accessories pages. Boring brain. Boring face. No sex appeal. Clumsy hands.
"Heart. Hard heart," I said, not sure where it came from. "The hardest heart in the world."
"Hmmm," Toby said, tapping a finger in the air. "That's a useful one, you know. Very handy. The question is ... " Toby paused like he was considering this all very seriously.
"What's the question?"
"The question is, stone or ice? Crack or melt? — Carol Rifka Brunt

Early in the winter of 2002, I gave my life to the Lord. Before I was one, I always thought being a Christian would be boring. In reality, it has been the complete opposite. — Zach Johnson

I don't want to learn in a classroom anymore. I want to travel and talk to people and learn that way. I want to learn as I go,gathering knowledge and not being rigorously tested on it. I don't want to lose passion in the things I like because of the worry of exams. I want to be fuelled by snippets of knowledge I gain from people and be inquisitive. School has stolen my passion for the things I'm interested in and I hate it for that. — Anonymous

So, to all you introverts out there, do not feel embarrassed or boring for being a person who prefers things that are hygge. — Meik Wiking

This is the very boring part of eating disorders, the aftermath. When you eat and hate that you eat. And yet of course you must eat. You don't really entertain the notion of going back. You, with some startling new level of clarity, realize that going back would be far worse than simply being as you are. This is obvious to anyone without an eating disorder. This is not always obvious to you. — Marya Hornbacher

His name was Paul Eluard, and he said this thing once: There is another world, but it is in this one ... It's like, you know, inside every stove there's a fire. Well, inside every grass blade there's a grass blade, that's just like burning up with being a grass blade. And inside every tree, there's a tree, and inside every person there's a person, and inside this world that seems so boring and ordinary, if you look hard enough, there's a totally magical beautiful world. And anything you would want to know, or anything you would want to happen, all the answers are right there where you are right now. In your life. — Paul Murray

Everyone always talks about the magic of books being able to take you to other places, to let you see exotic worlds, to make you experience new and interesting things. Well, do you think words alone can do this? Of course not! If you've ever thought that books are boring, it's because you don't know how to read them correctly. From now on, when you read a book, I want you to scream the words of the novel out loud while reading them, then do exactly what the characters are doing in the story. Trust me, it will make books way more exciting. Even dictionaries. Particularly dictionaries. — Brandon Sanderson

New Rule: The rest of the world can go back to being completely jealous of America. Our majority white country just freely elected a black president, something no other democracy has ever done. Take that Canada! Where's your nubian warrior president? Your head of state is a boring white dude named Steven Harper, and mine is a kick-ass black ninja named Barack Hussein Obama! — Bill Maher

Actors today think that being true is being nice, or being some other "set" thing. That is not the truth. That is your miserable habit of boring everybody to death. — Stella Adler

I have insanely dorky taste. Basically, if you're a woman, and you're under any kind of emotional duress, and you sing a song, I will listen to it forever. It's odd being a 37-year-old heterosexual male who owns nothing but Sarah McLachlan and Tori Amos. But I'll go against that at first and play something boring like James Taylor. — Matthew Perry

Dwindling energy is one of the most boring things about being old. From time to time you get a day when it seems to be restored, and you can't help feeling that you are 'back to normal', but it never lasts. You just have to resign yourself to doing less
or rather, taking more breaks than you used to in whatever you are doing. In my case I fear that what I most often do less of is my duty towards my companion rather than indulgence of my private inclinations. — Diana Athill

I am the model middle child. I am patient and I like to take care of everyone. Being called nice is a compliment. It's not a boring way to describe me. — Jennifer Garner

What is interesting about me isn't that I am a mother, it is who I am. I love my family, but if I just talk to you about being a mother, it's boring. I am sorry, but it's reducing who I really am, and it's really boring. — Laetitia Casta

When God creates Eve, he calls her an ezer kenegdo. 'It is not good for the man to be alone, I shall make him [an ezer kenegdo]' (Gen. 2:18 Alter). Hebrew scholar Robert Alter, who has spent years translating the book of Genesis, says that this phrase is 'notoriously difficult to translate.' The various attempts we have in English are "helper" or "companion" or the notorious "help meet." Why are these translations so incredibly wimpy, boring, flat ... disappointing? What is a help meet, anyway? What little girl dances through the house singing "One day I shall be a help meet?" Companion? A dog can be a companion. Helper? Sounds like Hamburger Helper. Alter is getting close when he translates it "sustainer beside him"
The word ezer is used only twenty other places in the entire Old Testament. And in every other instance the person being described is God himself, when you need him to come through for you desperately. — Stasi Eldredge

You are exposing yourself all the time as an actor. There's the risk of being thought of as bad or boring or unattractive. — Emily Mortimer

For some reason, anytime an adult decides you are 'representing' something, they decide you should represent it by being as quiet and boring as possible. — Tom Angleberger

It's only too easy to idealise a mother's job. We know well that every job has its frustrations and its boring routines and its times of being the last thing anyone would choose to do. Well, why shouldn't the care of babies and children be thought of that way too? — Donald Woods Winnicott

Tabloids invoke freedom of speech, but they're not interested in that, they're just interested in who's shagging whom, who's got drunk. And if you take that pretend, faux moral standpoint, you end up with people in public life being completely boring. Like they've had their genitals removed. — Jarvis Cocker

What attracted me about my mirrors was the idea of having nothing manipulated in them. A piece of bought mirror. Just hung there, without any addition, to operate immediately and directly. Even at the risk of being boring. Mere demonstration. The mirrors, and even more the Panes of Glass, were also certainly directed against Duchamp, against his Large Glass. — Gerhard Richter

I'd go to the library so I could sit in a big, quiet room and listen to pages being turned. There was a boring librarian who everyone in fifth grade hated. But I loved her because when she would read us stories in her soft voice, she'd turn my head into a snow globe. — Andrea Seigel

And I not only inherited an aversion to the nine-to-five routine, but the sense from my parents that being bored and boring is the worst thing that you can be. — Christian Bale

I'm just an entertainer. In a way crime stories are boring. A crime's been committed and at the end you know it will be solved. So you've got to make the story interesting besides it just being a plot. And that's why character matters, why you've got to make the characters interesting. — Jo Nesbo

The reason they don't explain this to us is because they know that if we find out the extraordinary lengths that they're going to to fuck us over, we will overthrow the current system and replace it with something fair. That's why all this important stuff is made to seem inaccessible, boring, and abstract. That is why our participation in politics has been sanded down into an impotent nub. Stick your "X" into this box and congratulate yourself on being free. — Russell Brand

I think every person has their own identity and beauty. Everyone being different is what is really beautiful. If we were all the same, it would be boring. — Tila Tequila

There is no sin worse in life than being boring and nothing worse than letting other people tell you what to do. — Paris Hilton

I also figure being eternally happy would be eternally boring so I try not to be too interesting, even though it's hard for me. I'd rather be a superhero in hell, kicking all kinds of demon ass, than an angel in heaven, wafting around with a beatific smile on my face, playing a pansy harp all day. Dude, give me drums and big cymbals! I like the crash and bang. — Karen Marie Moning

All things considered, I've learned more from talking to painters than talking to writers. Not that painters are smarter than writers, such is seldom the case, but in conversation writers are inclined to waste an inordinate amount of time either bragging or bellyaching about reviews and royalties, complaining about their publishers, or dissing other authors. Painters, being equally insecure, can likewise come across as boring and bitchy
it's tough being creative in a materialistic society
but since they labor not in vineyards of verbiage but upon ice floes of visual images, they tend to function with fewer inhibitions than the wordsmiths when it comes to vocally exploring and expressing ideas. Since no one judges their speech, comparing it to their written work, they don't feel so acutely the weight of language. — Tom Robbins

Boring, religious, and intellectually limited, Marie Leczinska was called one of the two dullest queens in Europe by her own father, the other dull queen being his wife. Marie — Eleanor Herman

People yearn for change, they relish being part of a movement, and they talk about things that are remarkable, not boring. — Seth Godin

It can be so boring being you sometimes, and if you were the most special thing like that, it could be really great, but maybe some people say the same thing about you, and you want to tell those people: 'No, you're stupid, it's no fun being me. — James Franco

I'm really into football, gadgets, adventurous activities, and cooking new, creative recipes right now - but you'll never catch me being boring. — Harry Shum Jr.

I have a fear of being boring. — Christian Bale

When it comes to rock music, I'm not much of a player, but I do have entry-level chops. I'm more knowledgeable as a listener, and Revival gave me a way to write about rock and roll without being preachy or boring. — Stephen King

Aw, I feel bad if [Taylor] was upset. I am a feminist, and she is a young and talented girl. That being said, I do agree I am going to hell. But for other reasons. Mostly boring tax stuff. — Amy Poehler

I still feel insecure all the time. I feel like it's just a part of being a human being ... I just learned normal is very boring. — Kylie Jenner

I think about when I used to dress that way, not in that dress, obviously, but in that flesh. I will never do it again. I have learned all kinds of lessons from dressing that way, great lessons, terrible lessons, boring lessons, all of them, the big one being no matter how much you own yourself and your body and your mind, there are men who will always try to seek power over your body, even if it is just with their eyes, although often it is with their words and sometimes with their hands. — Jami Attenberg

Elliott performed a dance called the Dance of the Twenty-Eight Veils in Times Square. It is on YouTube. Many commenters described it as the most boring erotic dance ever performed in the history of the world. I have never been so embarrassed in my unlife. I'm thinking of quitting being leader of the clan and becoming a vampire nun. — Cassandra Clare

You don't care what people think," he said.
She couldn't tell from the way he emphasized the words if he was asking a question or making an observation. Still, she felt obliged to answer.
"Of course I care. To a certain extent we all care, but we can't care to the point that we live in fear of others' opinion, that we allow them to change who we are. We must be willing to stand up and defend what represents the very core of our being. Otherwise what is the purpose of individuality? We'd be nothing but imitations of each other, and I daresay we'd all be rather boring. — Lorraine Heath

Architects are today routinely indoctrinated against the dumb box. Even advertising urges us to "think outside the box." Why? Because it is thought we all hate the box for being too dumb, too boring, and we want to escape it. If we do escape, by buying the advertised product, we usually find ourselves inside another dumb box populated by boring people just like us. It is clearly possible to live an extraordinary life inside a dumb box. Question: is it possible to lead an extraordinary life in anything other than a dumb box? — Lebbeus Woods

Something can be symbolic without being a mere stand-in or vessel, which just brings us away from the true mystery and dread, into some boring version of what we already know. So what you say is true, in that the bear is a kind of parallel to the speaker, or imagined as such, but also very different. So if it's a symbol it is - ahem - a polysemous one. — Matthew Zapruder

To be honest dinner conversations was the worst bit about being a child and listening to the boring people around me. — Prince Harry

I had a moment when I first got on Supernatural when I was like, "Oh my god, people are paying attention to me, I have fans, maybe I should cultivate an image and try to seem really cool." I had this moment of being commercially self conscious and it took maybe a month for me to realize no, this is not who I ****ing am, and here's a picture of me in drag. Which is, by the way, so much more liberating and relaxing. There's not a more sure fire way to give a stifled, boring, empty, vapid, meaningless interview than trying to say the right thing ... — Misha Collins

Am I being typecast as a horrible person? I don't know. I don't think so. But if it happens, I'd rather get to play that, because there's nothing fun about being sweet. Sweet can be so boring, so I'd be happy staying away from that. — January Jones

I'll not complain about your boring life, if you just leave me to mine — Elton John

When they returned to Filigree Street, Mori refused even to go upstairs. Instead he hid under a quilt in the parlour with Thaniel's never-read copy of Anna Karenina. The Russians, he said, knew how to write genuinely boring novels, and he would only stop being afraid when he was bored enough. They were all the more boring because he could remember reading the end in the recent future. — Natasha Pulley

Being infinite, God is inexhaustibly interesting. It is therefore impossible that God be boring. — John Piper

Being normal is boring ..xx — Bella Ward

What a beautiful future it will be! Don't worry about life being boring. It will never be. — Yoko Ono

I am really interested in eccentric minds. It's rather like being fascinated by how cars work. It's really boring if your car works all the time. But as soon as something happens, you get the bonnet up. If someone has an abnormal or dysfunctional state of mind, you get the bonnet up. — Mark Haddon