Kat Ringwood

“You can’t buy it, but it has a price,” said Oryx. “Everything has a price.”
― Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake

“How much misery…how much needless despair has been caused by a series of biological mismatches, a misalignment of the hormones and pheromones? Resulting in the fact that the one you love so passionately won’t or can’t love you. As a species we’re pathetic in that way: imperfectly monogamous. If only we could pair-bond for life, like gibbons, or else opt for total-guilt free promiscuity, there’d be no more sexual torment. You’d never want someone you couldn’t have’
‘…But think what we’d be giving up…we’d be human robots…there’d be no free choice.’
‘…we’re human robots anyway, only we’re faulty ones.”
― Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake

“friendship was always contingent.”
― Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake

“…Homo sapiens doesn’t seem able to cut himself off at the supply end. He’s one of the few species that doesn’t limit reproduction in the face of dwindling resources. In other words - and up to a point, of course - the less we eat, the more we fuck.’
‘How do you account for that?’ said Jimmy.
‘Imagination,’ said Crake, ‘Men can imagine their own deaths, they can see them coming, and the mere thought of impending death acts like an aphrodisiac. A dog or a rabbit doesn’t behave like that. Take birds - in a lean season they cut down on the eggs, or they don’t mate at all. They put their energy into staying alive themselves until times get better. But human beings hope they can stick their souls into someone else, some new version of themselves, and live on forever.’
‘As a species we’re doomed by hope then?’
‘You could call it hope. That, or desperation.’
‘But we’re doomed without hope, as well,’ said Jimmy.
‘Only as individuals,’ said Crake cheerfully.
‘Well, it sucks.’
‘Jimmy, grow up.’
Crake wasn’t the first person who ever said that to Jimmy.”
― Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake