Don't eat anything you aren't prepared to kill. Don't kill anything you aren't prepared to eat.

You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer.

Even in the tragedies, [William] Shakespeare always put in parts for the comic actors because his audience was mixed. He puts in people who talk like aristocrats. He puts in idiots and fools.

If I were going to convert to any religion I would probably choose Catholicism because it at least has female saints and the Virgin Mary.

... all this talking, this rather liquid confessing, was something I didn't think I could ever bring myself to do. It seemed foolhardy to me, like an uncooked egg deciding to to come out of its shell: there would be a risk of spreading out too far, turning into a formless puddle.

But I began then to think of time as having a shape, something you could see, like a series of liquid transparencies, one laid on top of another.

Those walls and bars are there for a reason,” said Crake. “Not to keep us out, but to keep them in. Mankind needs barriers in both cases.” “Them?” “Nature and God.” “I thought you didn’t believe in God,” said Jimmy. “I don’t believe in Nature either,” said Crake. “Or not with a capital N.