Sometimes I like to think that I live with ghosts. Not from my own past – I don’t believe in those sorts of ghosts – but whispy bits of ideas and books that hang in the air like silk puppets. Sometimes I think I see my own ideas floating around, too, but they usually don’t last long. They’re more like mayflies: they’re born, big and gleaming, and then they fly around, buzzing like crazy before they simply fall to the floor, dead, about twenty-four hours later. I’m not sure I’ve ever thought anything original anyways, so I don’t mind. Usually I find that Derrida has already thought of whatever it is, which seems like a very grand thing to say, but actually Derrida’s not that hard; it’s just his writing that’s dense. And now he’s a ghost, too. Or perhaps he always was – I never met him, so how can I be sure he was real? Some of the most friendly ghosts I live with are those of my favourite nineteenth-century science writers. Most of them were wrong, of course, but who cares? It’s not like this is the end of history. We’re all wrong. – Scarlett Thomas