Ahmed H. Zewail · 304 pages
Rating: (254 votes)
“When I was a child, I thought of my Delta town as the center of the
universe, but now I realize how little I know about the universe. As a
child, I thought I was immortal, but now I recognize how limited a time
we all have. As a child, success meant scoring A on every exam, but
now I take it to mean good health, close family and friends, achieve-
ments in my work, and helping others.”
“I don't know all the reasons for these achievements, but I know that I love what I do and I have never wanted to rest on my laurels.”
“Perhaps the most valuable thing he taught me (his father) was
that there is no contradiction between devotion to work and enjoyment
of life and people”
“Interestingly, this was the only incident of blatant prejudice that I can
remember. But I am aware that such opinions exist in human beings, and
it's not a question of being Egyptian or being an Arab or being a Muslim.
One could be a Christian against a Jew or a Jew against a Christian, or a
white against a black, or a man against a woman. My philosophy is not
to let such attitudes stop me from what I want to do. I don't take it very
seriously, although as you can see, I remember the incident very well.
The point was I had to get on with my work and had to behave properly,
and in the process perhaps even change the opinion of these people. But
on the other hand, if I did nothing but complain and feel sorry for myself,
then I wouldn't get anywhere.”
“in my first American
class—a freshman chemistry class during the 1969-70 academic year—
they looked at me as though I was supposed to be their nurse because
they were paying a stiff tuition. That's another concept I had to learn—
in American private schools we worked for them because they paid the
tuition, but in Egypt we were educating them.”
“Egypt is the gift of the Nile, as the Greek historian Herodotus said many centuries ago, in about 450 BC.”
“The prefix milli comes from Latin (and French for “thousandth”), micro and nano from Greek (for “small” and “dwarf respectively), and pico from Spanish (for “small”). Femto is Scandinavian, the root of the word for “fifteen” (femten)—nuclear physicists call a femtometer, the unit for the dimensions of atomic nuclei, a fermi. Attosecond, the next smaller unit, 10-18 second, uses a prefix also derived from Scandinavian, from the word for “eighteen.”
“And I will close my eyes and prepare myself so that they can unscrew my head and allow the map to slip into my lacunae. So that I can be filled and braced from the inside and fortified for the voyage. Because without my world inside me I will contract and congeal, more even than I am now, without speech and without actions and without any purchase upon time.”
“Everyone says that getting over somebody 'just takes time' and that one day it will stop hurting and the door will open for you to move on. We are also told that love is eternal; something extraordinary that will stay with you forever... The contradiction is immense.”
“Pleasure doing business with you, Chad,” Holloway said, setting down the infopanel. “Please die in a fire, Jack,” Bourne said.”
“Trev--"I heard you were going to go out with him and I burned with jealousy. No, burning isn't the right word. I was more like an inferno. So I followed you....."
"You're as pathetic as I am," I gasped out.
"Worse," he qualifies. "I'm a pathetic geek."
I snuggle back in to him "Yeah, well so am I.”
“How does one describe the feelings of a person who has been through something like we had, something no one could ever have envisaged? They could never comprehend the depths of man's inhumanity to man or the awfulness of an existence that consisted of surviving one day at a time.”
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