I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them
Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.
I think people believe in heaven because they don’t like the idea of dying, because they want to carry on living and they don’t like the idea that other people will move into their house and put their things into the rubbish.
… why I like timetables, because they make sure I don’t get lost in time.
Lots of things are mystries. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t an answer to them. It’s just that scientists haven’t found the answer yet.
Then he asked if I didn’t like things changing. And I said I wouldn’t mind things changing if I became an astronaut, for example, which is one of the biggest changes you can imagine, apart from becoming a girl or dying.
Water purling between the rocks, weed under the surface like green hair in the wind.
He is the only man she has ever loved, and he has dumped her like ballast. She needs to find an explanation that does not make her a fool and him an animal, but every thought of him is a knife turning in the wound love made.
She is off the heart’s map and her compass is spinning.
Maybe it was the heart which punished one with such exquisite accuracy.
After an Indian meal they went back to Jamie’s flat and Tony did at least two things to him on the sofa that no one had ever done to him before then came back and them again the following evening, and suddenly life became very good indeed.
It was true. There really was no limit to the ways in which you could say the wrong thing to your children. You offered an olive branch and it was the wrong olive branch at the wrong time.
Also I didn’t habe 20/20 vision whch you needed to be a pilot. But I said you could still want something that is very unlikely to happen.
And this shows that sometimes people want to be stupid and they do not want to know the truth.
Sometimes we get sad about things and we don’t like to tell other people that we are sad about them. We like to keep it a secret. Or sometimes, we are sad but we really don’t know why we are sad, so we say we aren’t sad but we really are.
Sometimes we get sad about things and we don’t like to tell other people that we are sad about them. We like to keep it a secret. Or sometimes we are sad but we really don’t know we are sad. So we say we aren’t sad.But we really are.
…companionship refused is worse than loneliness.
…because I went to London on my own, and because I went to solved the mystery of Who Killed Wellington? and I found my mother and I was brave and I wrote a book and that means I can do anything.
Lots of things are mysteries. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t an answer to them. It’s just that scientists haven’t found the answer yet.
I don’t remember deciding to become a writer. You decide to become a dentist or a postman. For me, writing is like being gay. You finally admit that this is who you are, you come out and hope that no one runs away.
No more things should be presumed to exist than are absolutely necessary
All the other children at my school are stupid. Except I’m not meant to call them stupid, even though this is what they are.
On the fifth day, which was a Sunday, it rained very hard. I like it when it rains hard. It sounds like white noise everywhere, which is like silence but not empty.
people believe in God because the world is very complicated and they think it is very unlikely that anything as complicated as a flying squirrel or the human eye or a brain could happen by chance.
And all I could see would be stars. And stars are the places where the molecules that life is made of were constructed billions of years ago. For example, all the iron in your blood which stops you from being anemic was made in a star.
And I know I can do this because I went to London on my own, and because I solved the mystery…and I was brave and I wrote a book and that means I can do anything.
That was the problem, wasn’t it? You left home. But you never did become an adult. Not really. You just fucked up in different and more complicated ways.
At twenty life was like wrestling an octopus. Every moment mattered. At thirty it was a walk in the country. Most of the time your mind was somewhere else. By the time you got to seventy, it was probably like watching snooker on the telly.
In life, you have to take lots of decisions and if you don’t take decisions you would never do anything because you would spend all your time choosing between things you could do.
And intuition is what people is what people use in life to make decisions.But logic can help you work out the right answer.
I like dogs. You always know what a dog is thinking. It has four moods. Happy, sad, cross and concentrating. Also, dogs are faithful and they do not tell lies because they cannot talk.
I think she cared more for that bloody dog than for me, for us. And maybe that’s not so stupid, looking back… maybe it is easier living on your own looking after some stupid mutt than sharing your life with other actual human beings.
But I said that you could still want something that is very unlikely to happen.
Reading is a conversation. All books talk. But a good book listens as well.
Things can be funny when people are uneasy. It softens them up and stops them falling asleep on the sofa. I like those moments where people half-smile and half-wince.
Use your imagination, and you’ll see that even the most narrow, humdrum lives are infinite in scope if you examine them with enough care.
I like poetry when I don’t quite understand why I like it. Poetry isn’t just a question of wrapping something up and giving it to someone else to unwrap. It just doesn’t work like that.