The characters [of The Tempest] have always been favorites of mine. It is one of his meditations on art - what it does.

The problem with meditating is I generally go to sleep, and that's because I'm doing it wrong.

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.

By telling you anything at all I'm at least believing in you, believe you're there, I believe you into being. Because I'm telling you this story I will your existence. I tell, therefore you are. So I will go on. So I will myself to go on.

But in the end, back she comes. There's no use resisting. She goes to him for amnesia, for oblivion. She renders herself up, is blotted out; enters the darkness of her own body, forgets her name. Immolation is what she wants, however briefly. To exist without boundaries.

You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer, an almost physical nerve, the kind you need to walk a log across a river.

I don't think it's a question of whether you eat meat. It's a question of what kind of meat, and where it comes from.