What is the real breath of a man — the breathing out or the breathing in?

The cat jumps up on the bed and tries to get onto my head. It's his way of telling whether or not i'm dead. If i'm not, he wants to be scratched; if i am - he'll think of something

making final judgements about poets, cities or regions on the basis of an anthology is always dangerous: anthologies are mirages created, finally, by their editors.

Inside the peach, there is a stone.

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 don't think the relationship between novels and realities are one to one. Of course novels play different roles. It's essentially just a long narrative form. What you use that long narrative form for can be very different.

Women are human beings, and human beings are a very mixed lot. I've always been against the idea that women were Victorian angels, that they could do no wrong. I've always thought it was horseshit and does nobody any good. Remember, Lizzie Borden got off largely because the cultural agenda had convinced people that women were morally superior to men, so Lizzie Borden was "incapable" of taking the ax and giving her mother 40 whacks.