“‘You know what Crewe is?’ said Tom. ‘Ultimate reality. That’s why we can’t touch it. Each of these shops is full of every aspect of one part of existence. Woolworth’s is a tool shed; Boots, a bathroom; the British Home Stores, a wardrobe. And we walk through it all, but we can’t clean our teeth, […]
“They moved from shop to shop, resting for as long as they were unnoticed, until they found a crowded Bingo room, so busy and full of smoke that they were able to sit in peace. They watched whole families ranged intent on their illuminated panels, while prams and children rolled about the floor. ‘Parents’ Day […]
“Probably the smart thing to say is, if you spend enough time reading or writing, you find a voice, but you also find certain tastes. You find certain writers who when they write, it makes your own brain voice a tuning fork, and you just resonate with them. And when that happens, reading those writers––not […]
“What is hardest to accept about the passage of time is that the people who once mattered the most to us are wrapped up in parentheses.” ––The Cider House Rules, by John Irving, pg. 429
“‘The reasons orphans should be adopted before adolescence is that they should be loved, and have someone to love, before they embark on that necessary phase of adolescence: namely deceitfulness,’ Larch argued in the letter. ‘A teen-ager discovers that deceit is almost as seductive as sex, and much more easily accomplished. It may be especially […]
“The language of evolution is neither mathematics nor computer-generated morphology. Certainly it is not statistics. Rather, natural history, ecology, genetics, and metabolism must be supplemented with accurate knowledge of microbes. Microbial physiology, ecology, and protistology are essential to understand the evolutionary process. The living subvisible world ultimately underlies the behavior, development, ecology, and evolution of […]
“The reason we think we understand nuclear origins is that certain live organisms today behave just the way we think many of their ancestors did. We must reconstruct evolutionary history from living clues that we take to be representative. Evolutionary novelty of the nucleated cell is best comprehended as specific historical products of partnerships and […]
“Vernadsky, a chemist who studied crystallography, was always interested in the structure of minerals. He was a scientific monist with novel insights. Unlike the vitalists, who held that there must be a special, unique property of life that gives it the ability to think and act on its own, Vernadsky saw life as a natural outgrowth […]
“Under stress, different kinds of individuals, of very different origins and abilities, physically associate. With continued and predictable stress, cyclical and seasonal, these acquaintances become intimate and extend beyond a single encounter. To become significant to the evolutionary process, the former strangers must interact frequently enough to form a stable, unique relationship––and ultimately a permanent […]
“Unlike mutation, the rapid acquisition of new, highly refined traits by acquisition and integration of former strangers confers immediate selective advantages on protoctist, plant, or animal captors. Often the association begins as predatory: One organism attempts to ingest and digest the other, which resists. The subdued prey or undigested bacterium leads to a trapped population. […]