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

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 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.

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.

Fear of ridicule begets the worst cowardice.

Knowing who you are is more valuable than having ten 'friends' who don't even know who they are, but who judge you anyway.

I feel my heart ache, but I've forgotten what that feeling means.

You can't write nothing that ain't real.

A classic is a classic for a reason. Let's try to create new classics. The idea of repeating ourselves drives me a little crazy.

Spreadable butter is wonderful for cake-making: it's much easier to cream than the block type and slightly lighter because it's blended with oil.

The Japanese are hard to figure out.

There comes a time in every man's life when he needs his own toilet.

If only the good were a little less heavy-footed

A prophet weeps while others are laughing.