A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason.

What am I living for and what am I dying for are the same question.

We do not know how we'd behave. But a lot of people facing fascism didn't become fascists. I don't happen to believe that we are all monsters.

friendship was always contingent.

Please don't make the mistake of thinking that 'Oryx and Crake' is anti-science. Science is a way of knowing, and a tool. Like all ways of knowing and tools, it can be turned to bad uses. And it can be bought and sold, and it often is. But it is not in itself bad. Like electricity, it's neutral.

I want everything back, the way it was. But there is no point to it, this wanting.

I knew what love was supposed to be: obsession with undertones of nausea.