I'm working on my own life story. I don't mean I'm putting it together; no, I'm taking it apart. If you'd wanted the narrative line you should have asked earlier, when I still knew everything and was more than willing to tell. That was before I discovered the virtues of scissors, the virtues of matches.

Maybe sadness was a kind of hunger, she thought. Maybe the two went together.

If we read books all the time we would be very unhealthy, as we would not get any fresh air, exercise, or contact with nature. Also we would not spend time with other people. There are a lot of plusses to reading - it's an interactive brain workout - but like everything else that's beneficial in moderation, overdoses can be dangerous.

It had helped to keep her sane, that writing. Then, when time had begun again and real people had entered it, she'd abandoned it here. Now it's a whisper from the past. Is that what writing amounts to? The voice your ghost would have, if it had a voice?

Never pray for justice, because you might get some.

All writers must go from now to once a upon a time; all must go from here to there; all must descend to where the stories are kept; all must take care not to be captured and held immobile by the past.

The male frog in mating season," said Crake, "makes as much noise as it can. The females are attracted to the male frog with the biggest, deepest voice because it suggests a more powerful frog, one with superior genes. Small male frogs—it's been documented—discover if they position themselves in empty drainpipes, the pipe acts as a voice amplifier and the small frog appears much larger than it really is." So?" So that's what art is for the artist, an empty drainpipe. An amplifier. A stab at getting laid.