Quotes from The Swarm

Frank Schätzing ·  881 pages

Rating: (12.1K votes)


“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.”
― Frank Schätzing, quote from The Swarm


“And yet most people would be lost without the idea that life increases in value the more it resembles our own.”
― Frank Schätzing, quote from The Swarm


“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?”
― Frank Schätzing, quote from The Swarm


“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.”
― Frank Schätzing, quote from The Swarm


“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.”
― Frank Schätzing, quote from The Swarm



“For us to perceive intelligence, it has to fit within our behavioural framework.”
― Frank Schätzing, quote from The Swarm


“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.”
― Frank Schätzing, quote from The Swarm


“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.”
― Frank Schätzing, quote from The Swarm


“He shrugged. ‘Worms. Two big ones.”
― Frank Schätzing, quote from The Swarm


About the author

Frank Schätzing
Born place: in Cologne, Germany
Born date May 28, 1957
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