1. “The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.”
2. “All the other children at my school are stupid. Except I’m not meant to call them stupid, even though this is what they are.”
3. “I’m not a spazzer, which means not spastic, not like Francis who is a spazzer”
4. “People think computers are different from people because they don’t have minds, even though, in the Turing test, computers can have conversations with people about the weather and wine and what Italy is like, and they can even tell jokes.”
5. “prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.”
6. “Some people think the Milky Way is a long line of stars, but it isn’t. Our galaxy is a huge disk of stars millions of light-years across, and the solar system is somewhere near the outside edge of the disk.”
7. “He was asking too many questions and he was asking them too quickly. They were stacking up in my head like loaves in the factory where Uncle Terry works. The factory is a bakery and he operates the slicing machines. And sometimes a slicer is not working fast enough but the bread keeps coming and there is a blockage. I sometimes think of my mind as a machine, but not always as a bread-slicing machine. It makes it easier to explain to other people what is going on inside it.”
8. “And people who believe in God think God has put human beings on 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.”
9. “Alexander was doing what is called chatting where people say things to each other which aren’t question and answer and aren’t connected”
10. “Everyone has learning difficulties, because learning to speak French or understanding relativity is difficult.”
11. “Also people think they’re not computers because they have feelings and computers don’t have feelings. But feeling are just having a picture on the screen in your head of what is going to happen tomorrow or next year, or what might have happened instead of what did happened, and if it is a happy picture they smile and if it is a sad picture they cry.”
12. “I do not like strangers because I do not like people I have never met before. They are hard to understand.”
13. “That was because when I was little I didn’t understand about other people having minds.”
14. “I think people believe in heaven because they don’t like the idea of dying, because they want to carry on living and they don’t like the idea that other people will move into their house and put their things into the rubbish.”
15. “Also I didn’t have 20/20 vision which you needed to be a pilot. But I said you could still want something that is very unlikely to happen.”
16. “also had a very hairy nose. It looked as if there were two very small mice hiding in his nostrils.1”
17. “Then he asked if I didn’t like things changing. And I said I wouldn’t mind things changing if I became an astronaut, for example, which is one of the biggest changes you can imagine, apart from becoming a girl or dying.”
18. “It sounds like white noise everywhere, which is like silcence but not empty.”
19. “like when you wake up at night, and the only sounds you hear are the sounds inside your head.”
20. “Well, we’re meant to be writing stories today,”
21. “And this shows that sometimes people want to be stupid and they do not want to know the truth.”
22. “But sometimes we get sad about things and we don’t like to tell other people that we are sad about them. We like to keep it a secret. Or sometimes we are sad but we don’t really know we are sad. So we say we aren’t sad. But really we are.”
23. “Being clever was when you looked at how things were and used the evidence to work out something new.”
24. “Sometimes we get sad about things and we don’t like to tell other people that we are sad about them. We like to keep it a secret. Or sometimes, we are sad but we really don’t know why we are sad, so we say we aren’t sad but we really are.”
25. “Mr. Jeavons said that I liked maths because it was safe. He said I liked maths because it meant solving problems, and these problems were difficult and interesting but there was always a straightforward answer at the end. And what he meant was that maths wasn’t like life because in life there are no straightforward answers at the end.”
26. “And I know I can do this because I went to London on my own, and because I solved the mystery…and I was brave and I wrote a book and that means I can do anything.”
27. “But in life you have to take lots of decisions and if you don’t take decisions you would never do anything because you would spend all your time choosing between things you could do.”
28. “And when you look at the sky you know you are looking at stars which are hundreds and thousands of light-years away from you. And some of the stars don’t even exist anymore because their light has taken so long to get to us that they are already dead, or they have exploded and collapsed into red dwarfs. And that makes you seem very small, and if you have difficult things in you life it is nice to think that they are what is called negligible, which means they are so small you don’t have to take them into account when you are calculating something.”
29. “I thought this might be another rhetorical question, but I wasn’t sure. I found it hard to work out what to say because I was starting to get scared and confused”
30. “And Father said, ‘Christopher, do you understand that I love you?‘”
31. “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 can’t tell lies.”
32. “I wondered whether Mrs Shears had told the police that I had killed Wellington and whether, when the police found out that she lied, she would go to prison”
33. “Because time is only the relationship between the way different things change, like the earth going round the sun and atoms vibrating and clocks ticking and day and night and waking up and going to sleep,”
34. “… I will get a First Class Honors degree and I will become a scientist… And I know I can do this because I went to London on my own, and because I solved the mystery of Who Killed Wellington? and I found my mother and I was brave and I wrote a book and that means I can do anything.”
35. “dogs are faithful and they do not tell lies because they cannot talk.”
36. “people believe in God because the world is very complicated and they think it is very unlikely that anything as complicated as a flying squirrel or the human eye or a brain could happen by chance.”
37. “I said that I wasn’t clever. I was just noticing how things were, and that wasn’t clever. That was just being observant.”
38. “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.”
39. “I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them”
40. “And it is funny because economists are not real scientists, and because logicians think more clearly, but mathematicians are best.”
41. “I didn’t like him touching me like this. And this is when I hit him.”
42. “I like dogs. You always know what a dog is thinking. It has four moods. Happy, sad, cross and concentrating. Also, dogs are faithful and they do not tell lies because they cannot talk.”
43. “…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.”
44. “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.”
45. “And what he meant was that maths wasn’t like life because in life there are no straightforward answers in the end”
46. “And then, after a while, she said, ‘Christopher, let me hold your hand. Just for once. Just for me. Will you? I won’t hold it hard,’ and she held out her hand.
And I said, ‘I don’t like people holding my hand.’
And she took her hand back and she said, ‘No. OK. That’s OK.‘”
47. “I like it when it rains hard. It sounds like white noise everywhere, which is like silence but not empty.”
48. “I cared about dogs because they were faithful and honest, and some dogs were cleverer and more interesting than some people.”
49. “In life, you have to take lots of decisions and if you don’t take decisions you would never do anything because you would spend all your time choosing between things you could do.”
50. “It’s bloody hard telling the truth all the time.”
51. “Then he said, ‘I did it for your good, Christopher. Honestly I did. I never meant to lie.‘”
52. “On the fifth day, which was a Sunday, it rained very hard. I like it when it rains hard. It sounds like white noise everywhere, which is like silence but not empty.”
53. “Life is difficult, you know. It’s bloody hard telling the truth all the time. Sometimes it’s impossible.”
54. “Then, when I’ve got a degree in Maths, or Physics, or Maths and Physics, I will be able to get a job and earn lots of money and I will be able to pay someone who can look after me and cook my meals and wash my clothes, or I will get a lady to marry me and be my wife and she can look after me so I can have company and not be on my own.”
55. “I do not want my name to mean a story about being kind and helpful. I want my name to mean me.”
56. “He was asking too many questions and he was asking them too quickly. They were stacking up in my head like loaves in the factory where Uncle Terry works.”
57. “And I think that there are so many things just in one house that it would take years to think about all of them properly.”
58. “Mother used to say 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.”
59. “And one of the friends died of fear that very nice and the other two were broken men for the rest of their lives.”
60. “Just think about today. Think about things that have happened. Especially about good things that have happened.”
61. “…and I went into the garden and lay down and looked at the stars in the sky and made myself negligible.”
62. “I think I would make a very good astronaut. To be a good astronaut you have to be intelligent and I’m intelligent. You also have to understand how machines work and I’m good at understanding how machines work. You also have to be someone who would like being on their own in a tiny space-craft thousands and thousands of miles away…”
63. “I also said that I cared about dogs because they were faithful and honest, and some dogs were cleverer and more interesting than some people.”
64. “This is because I do not always do what I am told.
And this is because when people tell you what to do it is usually confusing and does not make sense.”
65. “No more things should be presumed to exist than are absolutely necessary”
66. “..and only sticks and stones can break my bones.”
67. “…and there was nothing to do except to wait and to hurt.”
68. “People say that you always have to tell the truth. But they do not mean this because you are not allowed to tell old people that they are old and you are not allowed to tell people if they smell funny or if a grown-up has made a fart. And you are not allowed to say, ‘I don’t like you,’ unless that person has been horrible to you.”
69. “And then she made a loud wailing noise like an animal on a nature programme on television”
70. “I want my name to mean me.”
71. “Time is only the relationship between the different things changing”
72. “It was 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs. Shears’s house.”
73. “Lots of things are mysteries. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t an answer to them. It’s just that scientists haven’t found the answer yet.”
74. “… why I like timetables, because they make sure I don’t get lost in time.”
75. “most people are almost blind and they don’t see most things and there is lots of spare capacity in their heads and it is filled with things which aren’t connected and are silly, like, “I’m worried that I might have left the gas cooker on.”
76. “… dogs are faithful and they do not tell lies because they cannot talk.”
77. “I see everything.”
