Scarlett Thomas

“Child, all books are magic. Just think,' he said, 'about what books make people do. People go to war on the basis of what they read in books. They believe in "facts" just because they are written down. They decide to adopt political systems, to travel to one place rather than another, to give up their job and go on a great adventure, to love or to hate. All books have tremendous power. And power is magic.' 'But are these books really magic...?”

“Routine kills creative thought.”

“I sit up in bed slowly, feeling the disappointment trickle away like puddles after a rain shower.”

“I feel like crying. There's something so sad about broken concrete.”

“Max always mumbles; not in a shy way, but rather as if he's telling you what it will cost to take out your worst enemy, or how much you'd have to pay to rig a horse race.”

“People make events into stories. Stories give events meaning.”

“But I quite like the way you can talk about science without necessarily using mathematics, but using metaphors instead.”

“...'being published’ is not the same as being a real writer.”

“I always got a bit pissed off with those broadsheet sceptics who make their living being passionately angry about homeopathy, God, synchronicity or whatever, because it's as if they can't get past their emotions, and in their rage they become as faith-driven as the beliefs they criticise. I always said they give scientists a bad name. After all, science has to be about asking unthinkable questions, not closing down debate.”

“But the ground shakes, as if something's trying to push up from below, and I think of other people's mothers shaking out their duvets or even God shaking out the fabric of space-time.”

“I think about stories and their logic and wonder if there can be any such thing as simply "there is a book.”

“What folly takes light through ether to each eye from every horizon.”

“Most people would look at an animal in a cage and instinctively feel that it should be set free. . . . It's a dangerous world out there, filled with predators. . . . What would you prefer? A comfortable, safe, warm, cosy life in a cage, or an uncertain life of freedom.”

“Homeopaths argue that water has a memory.”

“Not all events are stories.”

“In real life nothing means anything. Stuff happens and there just is no structure.”

“Real life is physical. Give me books instead. Give me the invisibility of the contents of books, the thoughts, the ideas, the images. Let me become part of a book. . . . an intertextual being: a book cyborg, or, considering that books aren't cybernetic, perhaps a bibliorg.”

“Sometimes you have to trust grownups, perhaps more so when they are not there to actually supervise you.”