"The Year of the Flood" Quotes

The future isn't what it used to be.

The world is full of God's creatures, and not all of them are human.

The heart is capable of sacrifice. So is the vagina. The heart is able to forgive and repair. It can change its shape to let us in. It can expand to let us out. So can the vagina. It can ache for us and stretch for us, die for us and bleed and bleed us into this difficult, wondrous world. So can the heart.

In the beginning, you live through other people, vicariously, and then construct your own stories, your own versions of events, until you can't tell for sure what really happened and what you made up.

I'm not a pacifist. I believe in violence, I'm a proponent of it when it's necessary. But when you're violent for no reason, when you seek violence for its own sake, it's unforgivable.

The moment you declare a set of beliefs to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible.

We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.

They could not be mistaken for normal women: they were so large, so broad, so tall, so muscular, so strong looking, so confident. They had a dangerous air.

You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself.

The pain of the world is a gigantic thing. It's a physical thing. It has weight.