Scarlett Thomas quotes
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“People make events into stories. Stories give events meaning.”
-- Scarlett ThomasSource : Scarlett Thomas (2012). “Going Out”, p.20, Canongate Books
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“Homeopathy seemed . . . both mathematical and poetic.”
-- Scarlett Thomas -
“Routine kills creative thought.”
-- Scarlett ThomasSource : Scarlett Thomas (2009). “PopCo”, p.15, Canongate Books
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“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 ThomasSource : Scarlett Thomas (2012). “Monkeys with Typewriters: How to Write Fiction and Unlock the Secret Power of Stories”, p.36, Canongate Books
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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.”
-- Scarlett ThomasSource : Scarlett Thomas (2008). “The End Of Mr. Y”, p.102, Canongate Books
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“Honesty and authenticity are a big deal for me.”
-- Scarlett Thomas -
“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.”
-- Scarlett ThomasSource : Scarlett Thomas (2010). “Our Tragic Universe”, p.105, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
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“One of the biggest problems for beginning writers is this need to over-explain.”
-- Scarlett Thomas -
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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.”
-- Scarlett Thomas -
“I'm a great believer in gathering together all your obsessions and seeing if you can make a novel out of them.”
-- Scarlett Thomas -
“My novels are high concept. I guess big ideas interest me more than, say, the minutiae of domestic life.”
-- Scarlett Thomas -
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“Everything I know I imagine everyone else knows as well. And then everything that everyone else knows I imagine they know on top of what I know, so I'm constantly anxious about what everyone else knows.”
-- Scarlett Thomas -
“I think predictability is built into any good novel in some way - you begin reading Anna Karenina and you know pretty much what's going to happen at the end. But that doesn't mean you know what's going to happen in the middle. For me, it's that sense of what happens in the middle that's important.”
-- Scarlett Thomas -
“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.”
-- Scarlett Thomas -
“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?”
-- Scarlett Thomas -
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“You can't do science in a novel, but you can do philosophy. Or, if you're really lucky, you can manage to pose a question in such a way that other people will take it on.”
-- Scarlett Thomas -
“Living for ever would be like marrying yourself, with no possibility of a divorce.”
-- Scarlett Thomas -
“The sky was the colour of sad weddings.”
-- Scarlett Thomas -
“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.”
-- Scarlett Thomas -
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“But I quite like the way you can talk about science without necessarily using mathematics, but using metaphors instead.”
-- Scarlett ThomasSource : Scarlett Thomas (2008). “The End Of Mr. Y”, p.26, Canongate Books
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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.”
-- Scarlett Thomas -
“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 -
“If something wants to be a story, it will be.”
-- Scarlett ThomasSource : Scarlett Thomas (2008). “The End Of Mr. Y”, p.292, Canongate Books
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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.”
-- Scarlett ThomasSource : Scarlett Thomas (2012). “Going Out”, p.6, Canongate Books
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“In real life nothing means anything. Stuff happens and there just is no structure.”
-- Scarlett ThomasSource : Scarlett Thomas (2012). “Going Out”, p.20, Canongate Books
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“Sometimes you have to trust grownups, perhaps more so when they are not there to actually supervise you.”
-- Scarlett ThomasSource : Scarlett Thomas (2009). “PopCo”, p.97, Canongate Books
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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.”
-- Scarlett ThomasSource : Scarlett Thomas (2008). “The End Of Mr. Y”, p.363, Canongate Books
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“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 -
“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 -
“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 -
“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 ThomasSource : Scarlett Thomas (2010). “Our Tragic Universe”, p.152, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
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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.”
-- Scarlett ThomasSource : Scarlett Thomas (2008). “The End Of Mr. Y”, p.103, Canongate Books
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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.”
-- Scarlett ThomasSource : Scarlett Thomas (2010). “Our Tragic Universe”, p.351, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
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“Homeopaths argue that water has a memory.”
-- Scarlett Thomas -
“What folly takes light through ether to each eye from every horizon.”
-- Scarlett ThomasSource : Scarlett Thomas (2008). “The End Of Mr. Y”, p.30, Canongate Books
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