“She had been living like a hermit herself, in a cramped, seedy apartment in Somerville, spending long hours in the lab. All-nighters had become a regular thing. She didn't have any close friends, didn't go out on dates, didn't even go to the movies by herself. She had sacrificed a normal life in order to get a PhD, and become a scientist.”
“What is it about nature that is so terrifying to the modern mind? Why is it so intolerable? Because nature is fundamentally indifferent. It’s unforgiving, uninterested. If you live or die, succeed or fail, feel pleasure or pain, it doesn’t care. That’s intolerable to us. How can we live in a world so indifferent to us. So we redefine nature. We call it Mother Nature when it’s not a parent in any real sense of the term.”
“Whoever has the power in society determines what can be studied, determines what can be observed, determines what can be thought.”
“If nothing else, school teaches that there is an answer to every question; only in the real world do young people discover that many aspects of life are uncertain, mysterious, and even unknowable. If you have a chance to play in nature, if you are sprayed by a beetle, if the color of a butterfly's wing comes off on your fingers, if you watch a caterpillar spin its cocoon-- you come away with a sense of mystery and uncertainty. The more you watch, the more mysterious the natural world becomes, and the more you realize how little you know. Along with its beauty, you may also come to experience its fecundity, its wastefulness, aggressiveness, ruthlessness, parasitism, and its violence. These qualities are not well-conveyed in textbooks.”
“These Americans played with fire. Hydrogen bombs, megapower lasers, killer drones, shrunken micro-people…Americans were demon-raisers. Americans awakened technological demons they couldn’t control, yet they seemed to enjoy the power.”
“there was no objective truth, only the truth that’s established by power.”
“drinking a Coke and laughing, waving the camera away. “That’s the couple,” Watanabe said. “Grace and Bobby”
“The spider venom was Ebola in thirty seconds.”
“field is two million times greater than the strength”
“The point is to learn to live with roots inside yourself, instead of a thousand stupid rules to guide your day. Who are you without your rules, Elsie? Who would you find if you had the guts to just lie still and let go?”
“John, you don’t like me.”
“I’ve never said I didn’t like you.”
“You don’t have to say it. You just look at me and I know it’s true.”
His brows drew together. “How do I look at you?”
She sat back. “You scowl and frown at me as if I’d done something tacky, like scratch myself in public.”
He smiled. “That bad, huh?”
“Yes.”
“What if I promise not to scowl at you?”
“I don’t think that’s a promise you can keep. You are a very moody person.”
He removed one hand from his pocket and placed it over the even pleats of his shirt. “I’m very easygoing.”
Georgeanne rolled her eyes. “And Elvis is alive and raising minks somewhere in Nebraska.”
“Adults were pack rats of old, useless emotions.”
“Not for the first time, I wonder what it would feel like that, to be so beautiful that you don't even realize people are watching you, to be so confident that you don't even have to worry about being nervous or feeling self-conscious. I've spent what seems like my whole life trying to pretend I'm that way. What would it be like to have it just come naturally?”
“Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things, which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little. Many tyrants have sat on a throne, and those whom no man would think on, have worn crowns.”
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