Taxonomy is described sometimes as a science and sometimes as an art, but really it’s a battleground.

I can't think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything.

There are only three things that can kill a farmer: lightning, rolling over in a tractor, and old age.

If you can imagine a man having a vasectomy without anesthetic to the sound of frantic sitar-playing, you will have some idea of what popular Turkish music is like.

That's the trouble with losing your mind; by the time it's gone, it's too late to get it back.

Hunters will tell you that a moose is a wily and ferocious forest creature. Nonsense. A moose is a cow drawn by a three-year-old.

Geologists are never at a loss for paperweights.

Of all the things I am not very good at, living in the real world is perhaps the most outstanding.

Physics is really nothing more than a search for ultimate simplicity, but so far all we have is a kind of elegant messiness.

Protons give an atom its identity, electrons its personality.

Why is it, I wondered, that old people are always so self-centered and excitable? But I just smiled benignly and stood back, comforted by the thought that soon they would be dead.

I have ugly hands, but I'm grateful 'coz they work beautifully!

I can feel the hurt. There's something good about it. Mostly it makes me stop remembering.

When your safety is in question follow your intuition. It will help you balance along the precipice between vulnerability and adventure.

But nothing compared to the reality of the magnificent Light Storm of 2015, nothing, that is, except the almond shaped emerald eyes of his passenger.

The attempt to regulate, control, and prescribe all manner of conduct and social relations is very old. It was always the practice of primitive peoples.

The root cause of poverty is social injustice and the bad government that abets it

I drink a glass of wine or two occasionally with dinner. 'You drink alcohol?!' Well, if my state of consciousness is so fragile that a glass of wine would upset it, then it can't be worth very much.

I see my finished platinum print (in the viewfinder) in all its desired qualities, before my exposure.

Now he had recognized himself as a dead man it became important to stay alive as long as possible.

A woman in a single state may be happy and may be miserable; but most happy, most miserable, these are epithets belonging to a wife.