Homeopaths argue that water has a memory.

For other people, love is like some rare orchid that can only grow in one place under a certain set of conditions. For me it's like bindweed. It grows with no encouragement at all, under any conditions, and just strangles everything else.

Real life is physical. Give me books instead. Give me the invisibility of the contents of books, the thoughts, the ideas, the images. Let me become part of a book. . . . an intertextual being: a book cyborg, or, considering that books aren't cybernetic, perhaps a bibliorg.

People make events into stories. Stories give events meaning.

You can't do science in a novel, but you can do philosophy. Or, if you're really lucky, you can manage to pose a question in such a way that other people will take it on.

Most people would look at an animal in a cage and instinctively feel that it should be set free. . . . It's a dangerous world out there, filled with predators. . . . What would you prefer? A comfortable, safe, warm, cosy life in a cage, or an uncertain life of freedom.

I erased the thought from my mind, but I couldn't undo the fact that I'd had the thought in the first place.