Scarlett Thomas

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

Homeopaths argue that water has a memory.

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

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

Routine kills creative thought.

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

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.

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...?

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

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.

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

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.

...'being published_ is not the same as being a real writer.

Some writers, notably Anton Chekov, argue that all characters must be admirable, because once we've looked at anyone deeply enough and understood their motivation we must identify with them rather than judge them.

Sometimes I wake up with such an immense sense of disappointment that I can hardly breathe.

The sky is grey, with a thin TV-static drizzle that hangs in the air like it's been freeze-framed.

Nothing means anything but you still have to follow the rules.

One minute I was playing chess and doing maths all the time, the next I had been rerouted into more 'normal' girls' activities: reading, writing stories and worrying about my clothes.