Scarlett Thomas
Scarlett Thomas
Scarlett Thomasis an English postmodernist author. She has written nine novels, including The End of Mr. Y and PopCo, and teaches Creative Writing at the University of Kent...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionAuthor
reading mean thinking
I think predictability is built into any good novel in some way - you begin reading Anna Karenina and you know pretty much what's going to happen at the end. But that doesn't mean you know what's going to happen in the middle. For me, it's that sense of what happens in the middle that's important.
imagine anxious wells
Everything I know I imagine everyone else knows as well. And then everything that everyone else knows I imagine they know on top of what I know, so I'm constantly anxious about what everyone else knows.
ideas bigs minutiae
My novels are high concept. I guess big ideas interest me more than, say, the minutiae of domestic life.
reality life-is-like stories
I pray for meaning. I pray for the limits of reality to become clear. For a world – and a type of being – that makes sense. I pray for a life after death that is not like this life. I pray for the end of mystery. What would a life be like with all the mysteries solved? If there were no questions, there’d be no stories. If there were no stories, there’d be no language. If there was no language there’d be no . . . What?
wall church posters
Over to my left is the big grey wall in front of the church. Are we the Thoughts of God? a poster asks. No, I realise. It's the reverse.
sometimes grownups
Sometimes you have to trust grownups, perhaps more so when they are not there to actually supervise you.
real mean stuff-happens
In real life nothing means anything. Stuff happens and there just is no structure.
animal dangerous-world people
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.
eye light horizon
What folly takes light through ether to each eye from every horizon.
making-love touching together
So if we're all quarks and electrons ..." he begins. What?" We could make love and it would be nothing more than quarks and electrons rubbing together." Better than that," I say. "Nothing really 'rubs together' in the microscopic world. Matter never really touches other matter, so we could make love without any of our atoms touching at all. Remember that electrons sit on the outside of atoms, repelling other electrons. So we could make love and actually repel each other at the same time.
lying get-better special
You tell them what a happy ending consists of, which is always individual success. You tell them that nothing irrational exists in this world, which is a lie. You tell them that conflict only exists only to be neatly resolved, and that everyone who is poor wants to be rich, and everyone who is ill wants to get better, and everyone who gets involved in crime comes to a bad end, and that love should be pure. You tell them that despite all this they are special, that the world revolves around them...
mind firsts facts
I erased the thought from my mind, but I couldn't undo the fact that I'd had the thought in the first place.
girl reading writing
One minute I was playing chess and doing maths all the time, the next I had been rerouted into more 'normal' girls' activities: reading, writing stories and worrying about my clothes.
way metaphor mathematics
But I quite like the way you can talk about science without necessarily using mathematics, but using metaphors instead.