Scarlett Thomas > Quotes

“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.”
― Scarlett Thomas, The End of Mr. Y

“Routine kills creative thought.”
― Scarlett Thomas, PopCo

“I wonder if the reason I tend to say yes to everything is because I deeply believe that I can survive anything.”
― Scarlett Thomas, The End of Mr. Y

“If something wants to be a story, it will be.”
― Scarlett Thomas, The End of Mr. Y

“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.”
― Scarlett Thomas, Monkeys with Typewriters: How to Write Fiction and Unlock the Secret Power of Stories

“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.”
― Scarlett Thomas, Our Tragic Universe

“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?”
― Scarlett Thomas, The End of Mr. Y

“In real life nothing means anything. Stuff happens and there just is no structure.”
― Scarlett Thomas, Going Out

“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. ”
― Scarlett Thomas, The End of Mr. Y

“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.”
― Scarlett Thomas, The End of Mr. Y

“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.”
― Scarlett Thomas, Going Out

“Oh fuck. It’s like period pain in my head. It’s toothache of the brain.”
― Scarlett Thomas, The End of Mr. Y

“I erased the thought from my mind, but I couldn't undo the fact that I'd had the thought in the first place.”
― Scarlett Thomas, Our Tragic Universe

“Not all events are stories.”
― Scarlett Thomas, Going Out

“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...”
― Scarlett Thomas, Our Tragic Universe

“People make events into stories. Stories give events meaning.”
― Scarlett Thomas, Going Out

“Homeopaths argue that water has a memory.”
― Scarlett Thomas, The End of Mr. Y

“Sometimes I wake up with such an immense sense of disappointment that I can hardly breathe.”
― scarlett thomas, The End of Mr. Y

“I think about stories and their logic and wonder if there can be any such thing as simply "there is a book.”
― Scarlett Thomas, The End of Mr. Y

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

“And every one of these events is connected. But not by luck: it's pure cause and effect.”
― Scarlett Thomas, The End of Mr. Y

“But I quite like the way you can talk about science without necessarily using mathematics, but using metaphors instead.”
― Scarlett Thomas, The End of Mr. Y

“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.”
― Scarlett Thomas, The End of Mr. Y

“The sky was the colour of sad weddings.”
― Scarlett Thomas, The End of Mr. Y

“War thoughts again. I think back to the business cards from that health shop earlier on. I think about miniature wars that individuals fight all the time. They fight against cellulite, or negative emotions, or addictions, or stress. I think about how we can now hire all different sorts of mercenaries to help us fight against ourselves…Therapists, manicurists, hairdressers, personal trainers, life coaches. But what’s it all for? What do all these little wars achieve? Although it is a part of my life too, and I want to be thin and pretty and not laughed at in the street and not so stressed and mad that I start screaming on the tube, it suddenly seems a little bit ridiculous. All the time we do these things we are trying to enlist ourselves into a bigger war. We are trying to join up, constantly, with the enemy.
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Hitler tried to impose his shiny, blonde, neat, sparkling world on us all and we resisted. So how is it that when McDonald’s and Disney and The Gap and L’Oreal and all the others try to do the same thing we all just say, ‘OK’? Hitler needed marketing, that’s all. His propaganda was, of course, brilliant for its time, everyone knows that. What a great idea, to make people feel that they belong to something, that their identity makes them special. If Hilter had bee able to enlist a twenty-first-century marketing department, would he have been able to sell Nazism to everyone? Why not? You can just see a beautiful, thin woman with her long blonde hair moving softly in the breezes, and the tagline ‘Because I’m worth it’.”
― Scarlett Thomas, PopCo

“Homeopathy seemed . . . both mathematical and poetic.”
― Scarlett Thomas, PopCo

“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.”
― Scarlett Thomas, Our Tragic Universe

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

“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.”
― Scarlett Thomas, Our Tragic Universe

“I don’t have bionic arms, and I have absolutely no stamina. Once I rubbed out the penciled-in marginalia of a hundred pages of a book that I wanted to photocopy (long story) and afterwards it felt like I’d been wanking off a giant for a hundred years.”
― Scarlett Thomas, The End of Mr. Y