Scarlett Thomas Quotes & Sayings

Sometimes you have to trust grownups, perhaps more so when they are not there to actually supervise you. — 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

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

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 sky was the colour of sad weddings. — Scarlett Thomas

The storyless story is a vagina with teeth. — Scarlett Thomas

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

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 Thomas

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

One of the biggest problems for beginning writers is this need to over-explain. — Scarlett Thomas

In real life nothing means anything. Stuff happens and there just is no structure. — Scarlett Thomas

I think about stories and their logic and wonder if there can be any such thing as simply there is a book. — Scarlett Thomas

I drove out of Dartmouth and after a while Start Bay emerged out of the brightening gloom like the end of a set of parentheses in a book about the natural world. Inside the parentheses was a story about the sea. Outside them, the land: green, red and brown fields, and hills curling over the landscape. I saw small, delicate clumps of snowdrops, big rough patches of gorse, and along the thin road, houses with yellow roses and mimosa growing in their gardens. — Scarlett Thomas

Sometimes I like to think I live with ghosts. Not from my past, but wispy bits of ideas and books that hang in the air like silk puppets. Sometimes I think I see my own ideas, floating around too, but they usually don't last that long. They're more like mayflies; they're born, big and gleaming, and then they fly around, buzzing like crazy before they fall to the floor, dead, about twenty four hours later. — Scarlett Thomas

Christopher, like most people, didn't like his universe being unfathomable, so I doubted that a Zen koan would help him. — Scarlett Thomas

They really do have nothing in common on paper, these people and him. But yet there are so many common reference points; even some unexpected ones ... they all want to be cool. And they're all scared but no good at showing it ... [t]hey all know how to act cool. after all, life's pretty scary most of the time. And the number one skill you need out there is how to show no fear ... Stay calm. Don't let people see that you are shy or nervous. If you watch a horror film, remember to laugh. If someone else seems scared, laugh at them. In the real world, danger is either fantasy, in which case you laugh, or too real, in which case you ignore it. — Scarlett Thomas

People make events into stories. Stories give events meaning. — 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 Thomas

Only in homeopathy do you get specific remedies for people who believe they are made of glass, have a delusion that they are selling green vegetables, or have an aptitude for, or a horror of, mathematics. — Scarlett Thomas

Libby stood at the bar like something that had been hastily added at the end of a painting that hasn't quite dried yet. — Scarlett Thomas

The clue's always, always, buried deep in the boredom ...
Where do you feel most bored? Go there. — Scarlett Thomas

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

And every one of these events is connected. But not by luck: it's pure cause and effect. — Scarlett Thomas

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

Can something be created in language independently of the people who use the language? Can language become a self-replicating system or ... ' I'm drunk, I suddenly realise, so I shut up. But — Scarlett Thomas

'being published' is not the same as being a real writer. — Scarlett Thomas

Routine kills creative thought. — Scarlett Thomas

Living for ever would be like marrying yourself, with no possibility of a divorce. — Scarlett Thomas

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

Now dare to be tragic, for you will be redeemed.' Friedrich Nietzsche Ah! — Scarlett Thomas

If something wants to be a story, it will be. — Scarlett Thomas

If you threw a brick at someone you would be responsible for them feeling pain, presumably,' Libby said. 'But if you do the right thing and it makes someone feel bad, isn't that their problem? Then again, how do you even know what the right thing is? Who decides?' 'It's so confusing. I am sure about Mark, but I was sure about Bob before that, and Richard before that. Maybe Mark isn't for ever, I just think he is now when I can't have him. I have to face up to this about myself. I fall in love like that.' She clicked her fingers. 'I always have. 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. Good metaphor, huh? — 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

Honesty and authenticity are a big deal for me. — 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

[she] told me once that if you ask the sea for help it never fails you. I tried it a few times. It does make you feel better. You can just ask the sea for help and see what happens, or, alternatively, you can give it your problems. It's big enough to take them, after all. You could choose some large stones, make each one represent one of your problems and throw them in the water.' He shrugged. 'Probably sounds a bit hippy for you. I know you're more down to earth than we are - but sometimes you just need something to help you focus and let things go. — Scarlett Thomas

OK, so this is the story of a Chinese father and son and their best horse. The horse runs away, for no reason, and lives with some nomads across the border. The son is very upset that the horse has gone, and the father says to him, "What makes you so sure this isn't a blessing?" Then the horse comes back, a few months later, with a beautiful nomad stallion. The son is thrilled, but the father says to him, "What makes you so sure this isn't a disaster?" The son loves riding the new horse, but one day falls and breaks his leg. Everyone is sad for him, and his father says, wait for it, "What makes you so sure this isn't a blessing?" At some point the nomads invade, and every able-bodied young man has to go off to battle. The nomads basically wipe out all the men, but the son is safe because he is lame, and so he and his father live on and look after one another. — Scarlett Thomas

If life wasn't going to be like a Hollywood film, there was only one option: fuck life and rent the film instead. — Scarlett Thomas

I can't fuck up his whole life and take away everything that means something to him just because I think I've found my soul mate.' 'Yeah, but ... ' 'Yeah, but. I know. Having found my soul mate, how cruel is it for me to stay with Bob, pretending I feel more for him than I do and preventing him from going out and finding someone who loves him the way I love Mark?' 'You can't be responsible for other people's feelings, — 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

Nothing means anything but you still have to follow the rules. — Scarlett Thomas

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

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

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

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

I wonder if the reason I tend to say yes to everything is because I deeply believe that I can survive anything. — Scarlett Thomas

What folly takes light through ether to each eye from every horizon. — 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

Homeopaths argue that water has a memory. — Scarlett Thomas

I realised that when someone plays hard to get, they are making themselves into a character in a story, and they choose the story that leads to the outcome they want. — Scarlett Thomas

Somewhere in the world there is a magical book. What does this book do? It simply changes itself to become the book you most need at this point in your life. — Scarlett Thomas

Homeopathy seemed ... both mathematical and poetic. — Scarlett Thomas

My novels are high concept. I guess big ideas interest me more than, say, the minutiae of domestic life. — Scarlett Thomas

I'd been pleased to find there was an alternative to the other stuff, which all reminded me of advertisements containing people with perfect teeth, heroic expressions and offspring that looked like they were on their way to Hitler youth rallies. — Scarlett Thomas

If someone who had given up his whole life to thinking about goodness and rightness and truth and still expected nuns to cook him his fish fingers (because after all, nuns haven't got anything else better to do, and none of them are ever going to be priests or become the Pope, because women aren't good enough for that), then something was very wrong. How could he have missed the bit about everyone being equal in the eyes of God? — 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

Aquinas wondered what would happen if God wanted to achieve universal resurrection. In other words, bringing everybody who had ever lived back to life at the same time. What would happen to cannibals, and the people they ate? You couldn't bring them all back at the same time, because the cannibals are made of the people they have eaten. You could have one but not the other. Ha.' I looked at Rowan. 'That's a good example of a paradox. — Scarlett Thomas

I hate stereotypes and I hate cliche. — Scarlett Thomas

Patrick opens his arms about three feet wide and, with one finger pointing up on each hand, tries to show the scope of this thing. I notice that he doesn't look at his hands as he does this, but at the wall behind me. It suddenly occurs to me that when people describe size this way, they're relying on perspective to help them. He's not saying 'It's this big.' He's saying 'It would look this big from here if it was over there. — Scarlett Thomas

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

Oh fuck. It's like period pain in my head. It's toothache of the brain. — Scarlett Thomas

But I quite like the way you can talk about science without necessarily using mathematics, but using metaphors instead. — Scarlett Thomas

Not all events are stories. — Scarlett Thomas

If you discovered that you were the only person in the world, and everything you see around you was in fact a part of you, dramatised, how would that change what you are doing right now, right this very instant? What would you stop doing? What would you start doing? What would suddenly not matter at all? — Scarlett Thomas

Sometimes I wake up with such an immense sense of disappointment that I can hardly breathe. — Scarlett Thomas