A Selfless Art

“The nearest I’ve come to joining any religious group was in my late twenties when I started attending Quaker meetings. I liked the inclusivity and the absence of dogma. I liked the simplicity. I liked the political radicalism. Most of all I liked the practice of the meetings themselves, sitting in silence for an hour with other people and listening – properly listening – to anyone who felt moved to speak. To my surprise I was most affected by the experience of being made to listen to people to whom I would not normally have paid a great deal of attention, people who did not have much to say, people who were not very articulate, people who were perhaps mentally not terribly well. I learnt that people are interesting not by virtue of what they are able to give but by virtue of how open you are to accept it.”

Mark Haddon, Leaving Home, Chatto & Windus, 2026, p. 101