Fear has a smell, as love does.

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

Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you'd be boiled to death before you knew it.

I look up at the ceiling, tracing the foliage of the wreath. Today it makes me think of a hat, the large-brimmed hats women used to wear at some period during the old days: hats like enormous halos, festooned with fruit and flowers, and the feathers of exotic birds; hats like an idea of paradise, floating just above the head, a thought solidified.

All fat women look the same; they all look 42.

I read for pleasure and that is the moment I learn the most.

If I waited for perfection... I would never write a word.