He feels the need to hear a human voice—a fully human voice like his own. Sometimes he laughs like a hyena or roars like a lion—his idea of a hyena his idea of a lion.

Nature is to zoos as God is to churches.

We understand more than we know.

These things sneak up on him for no reason, these flashes of irrational happiness. It's probably a vitamin deficiency.

When they're gone out of his head, these words, they'll be gone, everywhere, forever. As if they had never been.

They spent the first three years of school getting you to pretend stuff and then the rest of it marking you down if you did the same thing.

He keeps his voice kindly but remote. A cross between a pedagogue, soothsayer, and a benevolent uncle – that should be his tone.

So that’s what art is, for the artist, ” said Crake. “An empty drainpipe. An amplifier. A stab at getting laid.

You need to give money when someone gives you a knife. So the bad luck won't cut you. I wouldn't like it for you to be cut by the bad luck, Jimmy.

She wasn't stupid. She just didn't want to put her neuron power into long sentences.

Beauty is in the reflection of your love that is always present in your heart.

Magic gives you a lot of choices, " Grandad says. "Most of them are bad.

I figured in the modern world, considering, Jesus himself would have likely been born in a frat house.

I don’t believe in statistics. I believe in calculus.

My style? You can call it the art of fighting without fighting.

Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg.

I do watch 'American Idol' sometimes. It's not really that pleasurable... I take that back. It is the epitome of a guilty pleasure. Sometimes there's some good singers on that show.

A cunning woman is her own mistress because she confides in no one. She who deceives others anticipates deceit, and guards herself.

Anytime anybody impersonates you, it's a great compliment.

Macaulay is well for awhile, but one wouldn't live under Niagara.