Scarlett Thomas Quotes
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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.
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For other people, love is like some rare orchid that can only grow in one place under a certain set of conditions. For me it's like bindweed. It grows with no encouragement at all, under any conditions, and just strangles everything else.
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My novels are high concept. I guess big ideas interest me more than, say, the minutiae of domestic life.
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It's not even a question of whether the universe is meaningful or meaningless. It's in what way could it be meaningful, or in what way, if it was meaningful, could that be even more meaningless than normal meaninglessness?
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But I quite like the way you can talk about science without necessarily using mathematics, but using metaphors instead.
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Sometimes you have to trust grownups, perhaps more so when they are not there to actually supervise you.
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I think about stories and their logic and wonder if there can be any such thing as simply "there is a book.
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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.
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I erased the thought from my mind, but I couldn't undo the fact that I'd had the thought in the first place.
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I'm a great believer in gathering together all your obsessions and seeing if you can make a novel out of them.
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People make events into stories. Stories give events meaning.
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The sky was the colour of sad weddings.
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Living for ever would be like marrying yourself, with no possibility of a divorce.
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You tell them what a happy ending consists of, which is always individual success. You tell them that nothing irrational exists in this world, which is a lie. You tell them that conflict only exists only to be neatly resolved, and that everyone who is poor wants to be rich, and everyone who is ill wants to get better, and everyone who gets involved in crime comes to a bad end, and that love should be pure. You tell them that despite all this they are special, that the world revolves around them.
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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.
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Homeopathy seemed . . . both mathematical and poetic.
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I wonder if the reason I tend to say yes to everything is because I deeply believe that I can survive anything.
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In some ways I'm a frustrated scientist or mathematician. The amount of times I've thought I'd go back to university and do theoretical physics because I like the big questions, but really I know now that that's not quite me. What's me is to do it in novels.
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What folly takes light through ether to each eye from every horizon.
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Honesty and authenticity are a big deal for me.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.