wonder kid
"Prime numbers are useful for writing codes and in America they are classed as Military Material and if you find one over 100 digits long you have to tell the CIA and they buy it off you for $10,000. But it would not be a very good way of making a living."
"Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. 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."
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"When people die they are sometimes put into coffins which means that they don't mix with the earth for a very long time until the wood of the coffin rots.
But Mother was cremated. This means that she was put into a coffin and burnt and ground up and turned into ash and smoke. I do not know what happens to the ash and I couldn't ask at the crematorium because I didn't go to the funeral. But the smoke goes out of the chimney and into the air and sometimes I look up into the sky and I think that there are molecules of Mother up there, or in the clouds over Africa or the Antarctic, or comind down as rain in the rainforests in Brazil, or in snow somewhere."
- Mark Haddon: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
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I know i'm really late in getting round to reading this one but i'm so glad Adrian bought the book coz i was totally rooting for this kid! Towards the end he really had my heart and i was so desperate to find out whether he made it to his destination safely i actually flipped the pages ahead scanning for key words to ascertain what the outcome was. and i think i was holding my breath the whole time!
it's been a while since a book grabbed me this much. what a great adventure and oh-so-easy-to-read! :)