You quickly find, when you are a hand-reader as I am, that nothing interests people so much as themselves.

You meet the same people on the way down that you meet on the way up, but you're going the other way.

As soon as you have a language that has a past tense and a future tense you're going to say, 'Where did we come from, what happens next?' The ability to remember the past helps us plan the future.

Because you may think a bed is a peaceful thing, Sir, and to you it may mean rest and comfort and a good night's sleep. But it isn't so for everyone; and there are many dangerous things that may take place in a bed.

I did not know how to paint or even what to paint, but I knew I had to begin.

Immortality,' said Crake, ' is a concept. If you take 'mortality' as being, not death, but the foreknowledge of it and the fear of it, then 'immortality' is the absence of such fear. Babies are immortal. Edit out the fear, and you'll be.

The heart with letters on it shining like a light bulb through the trim hole painted in the chest, art history.