Quotes by Scarlett Thomas

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

But the ground shakes, as if somethings trying to push up from below, and I think of other peoples mothers shaking out their duvets or even God shaking out the fabric of space-time.

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

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 arent cybernetic, perhaps a bibliorg.

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

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...?

Most people would look at an animal in a cage and instinctively feel that it should be set free. . . . Its 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.

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

Routine kills creative thought.

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

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

Homeopaths argue that water has a memory.

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

I feel like crying. Theres something so sad about broken concrete.

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

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 its as if they cant 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.

Not all events are stories.

People make events into stories. Stories give events meaning.

If something wants to be a story, it will be.

Theres something romantic about it, of course, in the way only other peoples lives can be.