“I'm a reasonable kind of guy. If I hear something that seems to make sense, I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. If the alternative explanation has to be pounded into shape before it fits the mould of our experience, it seems to me that it's unlikely to be true.”
“And yet most people would be lost without the idea that life increases in value the more it resembles our own.”
“It was the mystery that biologists from Darwin onwards had been longing to solve. How could we understand the ability of fish and seals to survive in the cold dark waters of the Antarctic? How could humans see inside a biotope that was sealed with layers of ice? What would the Earth look like from the sky, if we crossed the Mediterranean on the back of a goose? How did it feel to be a bee? How could we measure the speed of an insect’s wings and its heartbeat, or monitor its blood pressure and eating patterns? What was the impact of human activities, like shipping noise or subsea explosions, on mammals in the depths? How could we follow animals to places where no human could venture?”
“Los pueblos originarios siempre viven dosificadamente de algo que los blancos luego despilfarran. Una vez que lo han despilfarrado, se frotan los ojos y quieren protegerlo. Entonces lo protegen de aquellos de quienes nunca fue necesario protegerlo, y presumen de ello.”
“People are learning to grasp the diversity of nature, to understand its unifying principles and to sweep away the hierarchies and see the real connections.”
“For us to perceive intelligence, it has to fit within our behavioural framework.”
“Averages might mean something to bureaucrats and engineers, but the sea had no truck with statistics: it was a succession of unpredictable circumstances and extremes. A particular stretch of water might have an average wave height of ten metres, but if you were hit by a one-off thirty-metre monster that statistically didn’t exist, the average would be of precious little comfort: you would die.”
“Gli scienziati ritenevano che il limite inferiore delle dimensioni corporee per un essere intelligente fosse dieci centimetri, e quindi la possibilità di trovare un Aristotele che zampettava era praticamente pari a zero. Figuriamoci un Aristotele unicellulare.”
“He shrugged. ‘Worms. Two big ones.”
“If even the false war we pretend to fight has created so much hate between our peoples, what would a real one do?”
“Can you stand? We need to move out. It's not safe for you here. Too many people want to kill you.'
After a moment, Laurent said, 'Everyone to the south, but only half the people to the north.”
“James “Knockout Jimmy” O’Brien, Granite Fall’s very own boxing legend—a title he held until a young groupie poked holes in the condom she made him wear “for protection.”
My brother was born nine months later, fists already swinging.”
“Three Questions What was it like to love him? asked Gratitude. It was like being exhumed, I answered. And brought to life in a flash of brilliance. What was it like to be loved in return? asked Joy. It was like being seen after a perpetual darkness, I replied. To be heard after a lifetime of silence. What was it like to lose him? asked Sorrow. There was a long pause before I responded: It was like hearing every good-bye ever said to me—said all at once.”
“He was in fact a poet without words, the more absorbed and endangered, that the springing waters were dammed back in his soul, where, finding no utterance, they grew, and swelled, and undermined.”
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