You can’t buy it, but it has a price,” said Oryx. “Everything has a price.

Never pray for justice, because you might get some.

Eating is our earliest metaphor, preceding our consciousness of gender difference, race, nationality, and language. We eat before we talk.

Nevertheless, blood is thicker than water, as anyone knows who has tasted both.

I was warped early by Ray Bradbury and Edgar Allan Poe. I was very fond of Franz Kafka.

I'm not an activist by nature. I am suspicious of Utopian thinking and equally suspicious of its alternate. I would prefer to stay in the Writing Burrow and play with my imaginary friends and enemies. I get sucked into these things.

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.