Quotes from Scarlett Thomas

Over to my left is the big grey wall in front of the church. Are we the Thoughts of God? a poster asks. No, I realise. It's the reverse.

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.

Routine kills creative thought.

I wonder if the reason I tend to say yes to everything is because I deeply believe that I can survive anything.

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.

One of the paradoxes of writing is that when you write non-fiction everyone tries to prove that it's wrong, and when you publish fiction, everyone tries to see the truth in it.

I pray for meaning. I pray for the limits of reality to become clear. For a world – and a type of being – that makes sense. I pray for a life after death that is not like this life. I pray for the end of mystery. What would a life be like with all the mysteries solved? If there were no questions, there'd be no stories. If there were no stories, there'd be no language. If there was no language there'd be no . . . What?

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

Over to my left is the big grey wall in front of the church. Are we the Thoughts of God? a poster asks. No, I realise. It's the reverse.

So if we're all quarks and electrons ... he begins. What? We could make love and it would be nothing more than quarks and electrons rubbing together. Better than that, I say. Nothing really 'rubs together' in the microscopic world. Matter never really touches other matter, so we could make love without any of our atoms touching at all. Remember that electrons sit on the outside of atoms, repelling other electrons. So we could make love and actually repel each other at the same time.

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.

I erased the thought from my mind, but I couldn't undo the fact that I'd had the thought in the first place.

Oh fuck. It's like period pain in my head. It's toothache of the brain.

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

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

Not all events are stories.

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

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.

The sky was the colour of sad weddings.

I wonder at what point my life swerved to avoid that, and if that life would have been nicer than the one I've got.

And every one of these events is connected. But not by luck: it's pure cause and effect.

Homeopathy seemed . . . both mathematical and poetic.

Even if you did drop into someone's consciousness, you'd have all their memories and desires and hang-ups right there in front of you. And as you say, in an eternity you'd get the chance to know everything once enough time had passed. You'd become unable to judge anyone.' 'You'd end up being completely compassionate,' I said. 'You wouldn't be able to judge someone once you understood them and their motivations. You'd become them, like Rowan said, and so it would be like judging yourself.