When they're gone out of his head, these words, they'll be gone, everywhere, forever. As if they had never been.
When in doubt, when flat on your back, you can look at the ceiling. Who knows what you may see, up there? Funeral wreaths and angels, constellations of dust, stellar or otherwise, the puzzles left by...
When any civilization is dust and ashes, he said, art is all that's left over. Images, words, music. Imaginative structures. Meaning—human meaning, that is—is defined by them. You have to admit that.
When I get out of here, if I'm ever able to set this down, in any form, even in the form of one voice to another, it will be a reconstruction then too, yet another remove. It's impossible to say a thi...
What would you like to read tonight? he says. This too has become routine. So far I’ve been through a Mademoiselle magazine, an old Esquire from the eighties, a Ms., a magazine I can remember vaguely...
What was about this that made us feel we deserved it?
What possesses them, these young girls with a talent for self-immolation?
What mysteries remain to be revealed in the nervous system, that web of structures both material and ethereal, that network of threads that runs throughout the body, composed of a thousand Ariadne’s c...
What has having a baby got to do with getting a job at an art gallery? You’re always thinking in terms of either/or. The thing is wholeness.
What could be done? We thought we had such problems. How were we to know we were happy?
What are we do to? The child sex trade is not for us: our children are unattractive and rude, and - due to the knowledge of our history - have a bad habit of mugging prospective customers and shoving...
What I need is perspective. The illusion of depth, created by a frame, the arrangement of shapes on a flat surface. Perspective is necessary. Otherwise there are only two dimensions. Otherwise you liv...
Well stuff it, Jimmy thought. If he wants to be an asshole it’s a free country. Millions before him have made the same life choice. He was annoyed with himself for jabbering and capering, while Crake...
We've learned to see the world in gasps.
We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories.
We slept in what had once been the gymnasium.
We should think only beautiful things, as much as we can. There is so much beautiful in the world if you look around. You are only looking at the dirt under your feet, Jimmy. It's not good for you.
We battled in secret, undeclared, and after a while I no longer fought back because I never won. The only defense was flight, invisibility.
We are two-legged wombs, that's all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices.
Virginia Woolf said that writing a novel is like walking through a dark room, holding a lantern which lights up what is already in the room anyway.