I'm not senile," I snapped. "If I burn the house down it will be on purpose.

When I am writing fiction, I believe I am much better organized, more methodical - one has to be when writing a novel. Writing poetry is a state of free float.

If it's a story I'm telling, then I have control over the ending... But if it's a story, even in my head, I must be telling it to someone. You don't tell a story only to yourself. There's always someone else. Even when there is no one.

Disease has always been a much bigger killer of human beings than wars.

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.

It's rather useless to write a gripping narrative with nothing in it but climate change because novels are always about people even if they purport to be about rabbits or robots.

So that’s what art is, for the artist,” said Crake. “An empty drainpipe. An amplifier. A stab at getting laid.