Top 40 Scarlett Thomas Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Routine kills creative thought.”

— Scarlett Thomas

2. “People make events into stories. Stories give events meaning.”

— Scarlett Thomas

3. “I hate stereotypes and I hate cliche.”

— Scarlett Thomas

4. “In real life nothing means anything. Stuff happens and there just is no structure.”

— Scarlett Thomas

5. “Honesty and authenticity are a big deal for me.”

— Scarlett Thomas

6. “It’s not even a question of whether the universe is meaningful or meaningless. It’s in what way could it be meaningful, or in what way, if it was meaningful, could that be even more meaningless than normal meaninglessness?”

— Scarlett Thomas

7. “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.”

— Scarlett Thomas

8. “What folly takes light through ether to each eye from every horizon.”

— Scarlett Thomas

9. “I’m a great believer in gathering together all your obsessions and seeing if you can make a novel out of them.”

— Scarlett Thomas

10. “One of the paradoxes of writing is that when you write non-fiction everyone tries to prove that it’s wrong, and when you publish fiction, everyone tries to see the truth in it.”

— Scarlett Thomas

11. “I wonder at what point my life swerved to avoid that, and if that life would have been nicer than the one I’ve got.”

— Scarlett Thomas

12. “I promised your father I wouldn’t teach you any magic. Particularly after what happened with your mother. And I also promised some other people that I would not do any magic for five years... and indeed I have not done any magic for five years. Although... ′ He looked at his watch. ‘The five years is due to run out next Tuesday. Things should get more interesting then.”

— Scarlett Thomas

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

— Scarlett Thomas

14. “The sky was the colour of sad weddings.”

— Scarlett Thomas

15. “In some ways I’m a frustrated scientist or mathematician. The amount of times I’ve thought I’d go back to university and do theoretical physics because I like the big questions, but really I know now that that’s not quite me. What’s me is to do it in novels.”

— Scarlett Thomas

16. “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.”

— Scarlett Thomas

17. “I wonder if the reason I tend to say yes to everything is because I deeply believe that I can survive anything.”

— Scarlett Thomas

18. “I hate the honesty of the moring; the time before your consiousness switches on the light and gets rid of all the nasty shadows.”

— Scarlett Thomas

19. “Libby stood at the bar like something that had been hastily added at the end of a painting that hasn’t quite dried yet.”

— Scarlett Thomas

20. “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.”

— Scarlett Thomas

21. “If something wants to be a story, it will be.”

— Scarlett Thomas

22. “Heather cocks her head to one side as if she’s trying to make the information roll down a hill in her mind and come to rest in a place she can access it.”

— Scarlett Thomas

23. “I’d been pleased to find there was an alternative to the other stuff, which all reminded me of advertisements containing people with perfect teeth, heroic expressions and offspring that looked like they were on their way to Hitler youth rallies.”

— Scarlett Thomas

24. “Nothing means anything but you still have to follow the rules.”

— Scarlett Thomas

25. “Some writers, notably Anton Chekov, argue that all characters must be admirable, because once we’ve looked at anyone deeply enough and understood their motivation we must identify with them rather than judge them.”

— Scarlett Thomas

26. “Somewhere in the world there is a magical book. What does this book do? It simply changes itself to become the book you most need at this point in your life.”

— Scarlett Thomas

27. “Homeopaths argue that water has a memory.”

— Scarlett Thomas

28. “Sometimes you have to trust grownups, perhaps more so when they are not there to actually supervise you.”

— Scarlett Thomas

29. “But I quite like the way you can talk about science without necessarily using mathematics, but using metaphors instead.”

— Scarlett Thomas

30. “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.”

— Scarlett Thomas

31. “Aquinas wondered what would happen if God wanted to achieve universal resurrection. In other words, bringing everybody who had ever lived back to life at the same time. What would happen to cannibals, and the people they ate? You couldn’t bring them all back at the same time, because the cannibals are made of the people they have eaten. You could have one but not the other. Ha.′ I looked at Rowan. ‘That’s a good example of a paradox.”

— Scarlett Thomas

32. “My novels are high concept. I guess big ideas interest me more than, say, the minutiae of domestic life.”

— Scarlett Thomas

33. “It’s amazing how many grandparents some children go through. At my last school one wretched child had SEVENTEEN. Another one died every time there was homework due. Think about it, class. SEVENTEEN.”

— Scarlett Thomas

34. “Living for ever would be like marrying yourself, with no possibility of a divorce.”

— Scarlett Thomas

35. “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.”

— Scarlett Thomas

36. “I sit up in bed slowly, feeling the disappointment trickle away like puddles after a rain shower.”

— Scarlett Thomas

37. “I feel like crying. There’s something so sad about broken concrete.”

— Scarlett Thomas

38. “Max always mumbles; not in a shy way, but rather as if he’s telling you what it will cost to take out your worst enemy, or how much you’d have to pay to rig a horse race.”

— Scarlett Thomas

39. “One of the biggest problems for beginning writers is this need to over-explain.”

— Scarlett Thomas

40. “There’s a woman in the bakery who smiles at me as if everyone I’ve ever known has just died.”

— Scarlett Thomas

41. “My mind now has a celebration party and a funeral going on in the same room.”

— Scarlett Thomas

42. “One rabbit has a label on its are, another one doesn’t. You can love the one with the label and everyone accepts that. Risk your life for a real animal and people say you’re mad.”

— Scarlett Thomas