Jimmy found himself wishing to make a dent in Crake, get a reaction; it was one of his weaknesses, to care what other people thought of him.

I don't think I solve problems in my poetry; I think I uncover the problems.

I don't think it's a question of whether you eat meat. It's a question of what kind of meat, and where it comes from.

It used to be that your bloodlines dictated who you were. But the U.S. became the land of the self-made man, in which not only did you make a fortune but you could make up everything else about yourself as well. You move into a new town with a spurious pedigreed background and you just make yourself up.

We are very short on organs, and the pig solution is probably a lot better than the human clone solution - though maybe not for the pigs.

When we think of the past it's the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that.

There's the story, then there's the real story, then there's the story of how the story came to be told. Then there's what you leave out of the story. Which is part of the story too.