“But I know that all the things I do know are very small compared with the things that I don't know”

“If I'm reading something I happen to know and gets it wrong, I just don't trust the book any more. What I ask of a novel I'm reading is that it should know a fraction more about the things I know than I do. When I'm writing...I ask myself: would I be convinced by this if I read it? If I knocked against this bit of scenery, would it feel solid?”

“Lonely? I don't know. They tell me this is cold. I don't know what cold is, because I don't freeze. So I don't know what lonely means either. Bears are made to be solitary.”

“No,' he said, 'memory's a poor thing to have. It's your own real hair and mouth and arms and eyes and hands I want. I didn't know I could ever love anything so much...”

“Just sort of relax your mind and say yes, it does hurt, I know. Don't try and shut it out.”

“Blake said Milton was a true poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it. I am of the Devil's party and know it.”

“Everything about this is embarrassing" she said. "D'you know how embarrassing it is to mention good and evil in a scientific laboratory? Have you any idea? One of the reasons I became a scientist was not to have to think about that kind of thing.”