“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.”
“Princess. . . He honestly thinks I'm a vampire princess. . . . The strange, almost pleasurable, sensation I'd felt when he'd brushed my cheek was forgotten as reality hit me again. Lucius Vladescu was a lunatic.”
“I won’t snatch, harm, or scare to death people with you or use checking up on you as an excuse to cause trouble. You’re worse than my mother, Rachel.”
“Mine, too,” Jenks muttered.”
“What kind of assholes bring a kid into worlds like these?”
“- Колко глупаво нещо е любовта! — рече студентът, когато си тръгна. — Тя не е и наполовина така полезна, както логиката, защото нищо не доказва, винаги разправя неща, които няма да станат, и те кара да вярваш в неща, които не са верни. Всъщност тя е съвсем непрактична, а понеже в нашия век да бъдеш практичен значи всичко, аз ще се върна към философията и ще изучавам метафизика.
И той се върна в стаята си, издърпа голяма прашна книга и седна да чете.”
“There is no case,” he told her. “There’s a series of random and implausible crises that make no sense other than if you believe the most dramatic possible shit. And there’s a dead girl at the end of it all.”
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