Quotes from PopCo

Scarlett Thomas ·  512 pages

Rating: (4.7K votes)


“Sometimes you have to trust grownups, perhaps more so when they are not there to actually supervise you.”
― Scarlett Thomas, quote from PopCo


“War thoughts again. I think back to the business cards from that health shop earlier on. I think about miniature wars that individuals fight all the time. They fight against cellulite, or negative emotions, or addictions, or stress. I think about how we can now hire all different sorts of mercenaries to help us fight against ourselves…Therapists, manicurists, hairdressers, personal trainers, life coaches. But what’s it all for? What do all these little wars achieve? Although it is a part of my life too, and I want to be thin and pretty and not laughed at in the street and not so stressed and mad that I start screaming on the tube, it suddenly seems a little bit ridiculous. All the time we do these things we are trying to enlist ourselves into a bigger war. We are trying to join up, constantly, with the enemy.
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Hitler tried to impose his shiny, blonde, neat, sparkling world on us all and we resisted. So how is it that when McDonald’s and Disney and The Gap and L’Oreal and all the others try to do the same thing we all just say, ‘OK’? Hitler needed marketing, that’s all. His propaganda was, of course, brilliant for its time, everyone knows that. What a great idea, to make people feel that they belong to something, that their identity makes them special. If Hilter had bee able to enlist a twenty-first-century marketing department, would he have been able to sell Nazism to everyone? Why not? You can just see a beautiful, thin woman with her long blonde hair moving softly in the breezes, and the tagline ‘Because I’m worth it’.”
― Scarlett Thomas, quote from PopCo


“Homeopathy seemed . . . both mathematical and poetic.”
― Scarlett Thomas, quote from PopCo


“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.”
― Scarlett Thomas, quote from PopCo


“Only in homeopathy do you get specific remedies for people who believe they are made of glass, have a delusion that they are selling green vegetables, or have an aptitude for, or a horror of, mathematics.”
― Scarlett Thomas, quote from PopCo



“Someone who has the delusion Glass, is made of, does not literally believe herself to be made of glass but rather feels fragile and brittle, as if she might break. This might be someone who constantly thinks bad things are going to happen to her, or someone coming off drugs, perhaps, feeling she might break down.”
― Scarlett Thomas, quote from PopCo


About the author

Scarlett Thomas
Born place: in London, The United Kingdom
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Popular quotes

“Io e te. Siamo amici, vero? Ci conosciamo da meno di due settimane, ma abbiamo fatto parecchio sesso, e ho pulito il tuo vomito, e tu hai guardato le mie cicatrici e non hai girato lo sguardo. Immagino che queste cose ci rendano almeno amici.”
Quella conversazione stava mettendo Jimmy a disagio. Fece un passo indietro, e quando Shane avanzò, ne fece un altro, fino a che non si trovò con le spalle al muro. “Siamo amici,” disse piano. Fu strano pronunciare quelle parole.
Fu ricompensato dal sorriso di Shane. “E gli amici non tengono il conto. Si fa qualcosa per loro perché ne hanno bisogno o per farli felici, il che a sua volta rende felici noi, e quello è già uno scambio equo, magari nessuno te lo aveva dimostrato prima d’ora, ma avrebbero dovuto.”
― Kim Fielding, quote from Rattlesnake


“forgiveness was not a one-time act. It was a decision to move on and focus on a person’s good features each time the hurt over what they’ve done crept back up on you.”
― J.D. Horn, quote from The Line


“I rejoice that there are owls. Let them do the idiotic and maniacal hooting for men. It is a sound admirably suited to swamps and twilight woods which no day illustrates, suggesting a vast and undeveloped nature which men have not recognized.”
― Henry David Thoreau, quote from Walden and other writings


“In the months that followed my mother's death, I managed to look like a normal person. I walked the street; I answered my phone; I brushed my teeth; most of the time. But I was not OK. I was in grief. Nothing seemed important. Daily tasks were exhausting. Dishes piled in the sink, knives crusted with strawberry jam. At one point I did not wash my hair for ten days. I felt that I had abruptly arrived at a terrible, insistent truth about the impermanence of everyday.”
― Meghan O'Rourke, quote from The Long Goodbye


“I'm so glad you're not dumb, Yaz," Neela said.
Yazeed shot her a sidelong glance. " I thought you were going to say dead."
"That too."
"Hey, thanks.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, quote from Rogue Wave


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