So often we talk about saving the planet, but what we really mean is to save the planet the way it is, so we can live here. So that is can sustain us. Because the planet doesn't need to be saved. It doesn't care if all the squirrels, elephants, and t...
if Jesus had stooped to play politics he might have become a key man in Roman Judea, a big operator. It was because he was indifferent to politics, and made his indifference clear, that he was liquidated. How to live one's life outside politics, and ...
Our power knows no limits, yet we cannot find food for a starving child, or a home for a refugee. Our knowledge is without measure and we build the weapons that will destroy us. We live on the edge of ourselves, terrified of the darkness within. We h...
Better biofuels are a really big deal. That means we can precisely engineer the molecules in the fuel chain and optimize them along the way. So, if all goes well, they're going to have designer bugs in warm vats that are eating and digesting sugars t...
I think there's something really painful about your identity being entirely composed of ghosts. For me, I didn't want to be this kid whose Dominicanness was something caught utterly in the past, is an abstraction, the thing that I write about. Instea...
Like a kite, carried by the wind, he followed her into the fluffy white clouds of her imagination. He didn't think her silly for living in the sky, but rather, he marveled at the wondrous life she had created on the outskirts of reality. He knew her ...
If I die, I will wait for you, do you understand? No matter how long. I will watch from beyond to make sure you live every year you have to its fullest, and then we’ll have so much to talk about when I see you again… (Bones)
It has actually been suggested that warfare may have been the principle evolutionary pressure that created the huge gap between the human brain and that of our closest living relatives, the anthropoid apes. Whole groups of hominids with inferior brai...
I was convinced I'd hate Twitter - but I've come to like it very much. I use it mostly to keep in touch with friends and colleagues I wish I could see more often - I sometimes feel a little isolated living in Yorkshire, and it's nice to have the cont...
I do all kinds of roles - nerd, psycho, nerd, psycho, nerd, psycho - and occasionally someone kind of normal. It's weird, when I lived in Austin I was always cast as pretty normal people. But when I moved to Los Angeles I was immediately branded a ps...
When I first got sick, they told me I had a year to live, and I was writing my memoir really fast. There were really weird things happening with my nervous system and my heart and stuff, and it didn't look like I was gonna make it, so I was writing r...
I grew up very nice. But after college, my father said you're on you own. So I was dead broke for years. So I know what it's - I lived on 600 dollars a month for six years. I know what it's like to be dead broke. I feel bad for people who are struggl...
I have a whole iPod full of exceptionally bad music, truly awful stuff including a disproportionate number of one hit wonders from the early '80s and lots of hair bands. I find it utterly impossible to love a song until I know every single word, so l...
Max Vandenburg: [presenting Liesel with a blank book of pages] Write. In my religion we're taught that every living thing, every leaf, every bird, is only alive because it contains the secret word for life. That's the only difference between us and a...
Anton: Sometimes it feels like there is a veil between you and death, but that veil disappears when you lose someone you loved or someone who was close to you, and you see death clearly, for a second, but later the veil returns, and you carry on livi...
What I believe is that people have many modes in which they can be. When we live in cities, the one we are in most of the time is the alert mode. The 'take control of things' mode, the 'be careful, watch out' mode, the 'speed' mode - the 'Red Bull' m...
I was spending a lot of time in Mumbai after I met my husband, who is Indian, and while parts of the city were prospering like crazy, I couldn't quite make out how the new wealth had changed the prospects of the majority of city residents who lived i...
If I'm flying to China, I can sit and think about a problem. Other scientists have to go to the lab. I'm always thinking about maths, even when I'm doing other things. A lot of the time you're going up blind alleys and it's very frustrating, but then...
I think people who don't work don't really have interesting and meaningful lives. More than anything, it hurts them. When you're born rich, people just associate you with what you've been given, but the truth is every individual feels better when you...
Vincent: Lady Macbeth. Leave the seats. The light's green. We're sitting here. Max: [a car horn honks behind Max. The car whips around them to get through the intersection] Asshole! Vincent: You no longer have the cleanest cab in La-La Land. You gott...
Captain: Not bad in here, is it? No mail, no telephone. Solid wood paneling. Well-ventilated boat. Free food, too. "Rolling in clover" we are. Der Leitende: ...Like fresh horse-droppings. They're "Rolling in clover" as well. They have no need to make...
