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Take A Moment From Time To Time To Remember That You Are Alive. I Know This Sounds A Trifle Obvious, But It Is Amazing How Little Time We Take To Remark Upon This Singular And Gratifying Fact. By The Most Astounding Stroke Of Luck An Infinitesimal Portion Of All The Matter In The Universe Came Together To Create You And For The Tiniest Moment In The Great Span Of Eternity You Have The Incomparable Privilege To Exist.
-Bill Bryson
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Take A Moment From

Bill Bryson
Take A Moment From Time To Time To Remember That You Are Alive. I Know This Sounds A Trifle Obvious, But It Is Amazing How Little Time We Take To Remark Upon This Singular And Gratifying Fact. By The Most Astounding Stroke Of Luck An Infinitesimal Portion Of All The Matter In The Universe Came Together To Create You And For The Tiniest Moment In The Great Span Of Eternity You Have The Incomparable Privilege To Exist.
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Luck
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Still, I Never Really Mind Bad Service In A Restaurant. It Makes Me Feel Better About Not Leaving A Tip.
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I See Litter As Part Of A Long Continuum Of Anti-social Behaviour.
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Suddenly, In The Space Of A Moment, I Realized What It Was That I Loved About Britain - Which Is To Say, All Of It. Every Last Bit Of It, Good And Bad - Old Churches, Country Lanes, People Saying 'mustn't Grumble,' And 'i'm Terribly Sorry But,' People Apologizing To Me When I Conk Them With A Careless Elbow, Milk In Bottles, Beans On Toast, Haymaking In June, Seaside Piers, Ordnance Survey Maps, Tea And Crumpets, Summer Showers And Foggy Winter Evenings - Every Bit Of It.
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On The Dashboard Of Our Family Car Is A Shallow Indentation About The Size Of A Paperback Book. If You Are Looking For Somewhere To Put Your Sunglasses Or Spare Change, It Is The Obvious Place, And It Works Extremely Well, I Must Say, So Long As The Car Is Not Actually Moving. However, As Soon As You Put The Car In Motion ... Everything Slides Off ... It Can Hold Nothing That Has Not Been Nailed To It. So I Ask You: What Then Is It For?
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He Had The Sort Of Face That Makes You Realize God Does Have A Sense Of Humor.
Doe
Faces
Sense Of Humor
In My Day, The Principal Concerns Of University Students Were Sex, Smoking Dope, Rioting And Learning. Learning Was Something You Did Only When The First Three Weren't Available.
Sex
Dope
University Students
Woods Are Not Like Other Spaces. To Begin With, They Are Cubic. Their Trees Surround You, Loom Over You, Press In From All Sides. Woods Choke Off Views & Leave You Muddled & Without Bearings. They Make You Feel Small & Confused & Vulnerable, Like A Small Child Lost In A Crowd Of Strange Legs. Stand In A Desert Or Prairie & You Know You Are In A Big Space. Stand In The Woods And You Only Sense It. They Are Vast, Featureless Nowhere. And They Are Alive.
Children
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And I Find Chopsticks Frankly Distressing. Am I Alone In Thinking It Odd That A People Ingenious Enough To Invent Paper, Gunpowder, Kites And Any Number Of Other Useful Objects, And Who Have A Noble History Extending Back 3,000 Years Haven't Yet Worked Out That A Pair Of Knitting Needles Is No Way To Capture Food?
Food
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I Just Use My Life Story As A Kind Of Device On Which To Hang Comic Observations. It's Not My Interest Or Instinct To Tell The World Anything Pertinent About Myself Or My Family.
Stories
Use
World
There Is No Such Thing, Incidentally, As One Kudo.
Maine Is Wonderful. It Can Be Very Hard. I Mean, If You Look At The Profile Maps It Doesn't Look It, But Somehow When You Get Out There It's Really Steep And Hard.
Mean
Looks
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More Than 300 Million People In The World Speak English And The Rest, It Sometimes Seems, Try To.
Speak English
People
Trying
All The Things That Are Part Of Your Heritage Make You British - That Makes This Country What It Is. It's Part Of Your History. And Here, Unlike America, It's Still Living History.
Country
America
Heritage
At A Conference Of Sociologists In America In 1977, Love Was Defined As "the Cognitive-affective State Characterized By Intrusive And Obsessive Fantasizing Concerning Reciprocity Of Amorant Feelings By The Object Of The Amorance." That Is Jargon - The Practice Of Never Calling A Spade A Spade When You Might Instead Call It A Manual Earth-restructuring Implement - And It Is One Of The Great Curses Of Modern English.
Practice
America
Feelings
Geologists Are Never At A Loss For Paperweights.
Loss
Geologist
So Here I Am, My Affections Torn Between A Postal Service That Never Feeds Me But Can Tackle A Challenge And One That Gives Me Free Tape And Prompt Service But Won't Help Me Out When I Can't Remember A Street Name. The Lesson To Draw From This, Of Course, Is That When You Move From One Country To Another You Have To Accept That There Are Some Things That Are Better And Some Things Worse, And There Is Nothing You Can Do About It. That May Not Be The Profoundest Of Insights To Take Away From A Morning's Outing, But I Did Get A Free Doughnut As Well, So On Balance I Guess I'm Happy.
Country
Morning
Moving
People Don't Talk Like This, Theytalklikethis. Syllables, Words, Sentences Run Together Like A Watercolour Left In The Rain. To Understand What Anyone Is Saying To Us We Must Separate These Noises Into Words And The Words Into Sentences So That We Might In Our Turn Issue A Stream Of Mixed Sounds In Response.
Running
Rain
Issues
I Refer Of Course To The Soaring Wonder Of The Age Known As The Eiffel Tower. Never In History Has A Structure Been More Technologically Advanced, Materially Obsolescent, And Gloriously Pointless All At The Same Time.
Age
Towers
Wonder
It Isn't Easy To Become A Fossil. ... Only About One Bone In A Billion, It Is Thought, Becomes Fossilized. If That Is So, It Means That The Complete Fossil Legacy Of All The Americans Alive Today - That's 270 Million People With 206 Bones Each - Will Only Be About 50 Bones, One-quarter Of A Complete Skeleton. That's Not To Say, Of Course, That Any Of These Bones Will Ever Actually Be Found.
Mean
Science
Skeletons
If You Drive To, Say, Shenandoah National Park, Or The Great Smoky Mountains, You'll Get Some Appreciation For The Scale And Beauty Of The Outdoors. When You Walk Into It, Then You See It In A Completely Different Way. You Discover It In A Much Slower, More Majestic Sort Of Way.
Gratitude
Appreciation
Mountain
[the Royal Society] Is Quite Simply The Voice Of Science In Britain. It Is Intellectually Rigorous, Not Afraid To Be Outspoken On Controversial Issues Such As Climate Change, But It Is Not Aggressively Secular Either, Insisting On A Single View Of The World. In Fact, There Are Plenty Of Eminent Scientists - Robert Winston, For Instance - Who Are Also Men Of Faith.
Faith
Science
Men
There Is Something About The Momentum Of Travel That Makes You Want To Just Keep Moving, To Never Stop.
Moving
Momentum
Want
Traveling Makes You Realize What An Immeasurably Nice Place Much Of America Could Be If Only People Possessed The Same Instinct For Preservation As They Do In Europe.
Travel
Nice
Europe
The Food Is Excellent. The Beer Is Cold. The Sun Nearly Always Shines. There Is Coffee On Every Corner. Life Doesn’t Get Much Better Than This.
Travel
Coffee
Beer
When I Was Growing Up I Used To Think That The Best Thing About Coming From Des Moines Was That It Meant You Didn't Come From Anywhere Else In Iowa. By Iowa Standards, Des Moines Is A Mecca Of Cosmopolitanism, A Dynamic Hub Of Wealth And Education, Where People Wear Three-piece Suits And Dark Socks, Often Simultaneously.
Growing Up
Dark
Thinking
In A Funny Way, Nothing Makes You Feel More Like A Native Of Your Own Country Than To Live Where Nearly Everyone Is Not.
Country
Way
Feels
I Love Everything About Motels. I Can't Help Myself. I Still Get Excited Every Time I Slip A Key Into A Motel Room Door And Fling It Open.
Keys
Doors
Rooms
As The Saying Goes, It Takes All Kinds To Make The World Go Around, Though Perhaps Some Shouldn't Go Quite So Far Around It As Others.
Life
World
Kind
It Is Not As If Farming Brought A Great Improvement In Living Standards Either. A Typical Hunter-gatherer Enjoyed A More Varied Diet And Consumed More Protein And Calories Than Settled People, And Took In Five Times As Much Viatmin C As The Average Person Today.
Average
People
Typical
It Is A Curious Feature Of Our Existance That We Come From A Planet That Is Very Good At Promoting Life But Even Better At Extinguishing It.
Curious
Planets
Very Good
There Is Always A Little More Toothpaste In The Tube. Think About It.
Thinking
Littles
Toothpaste
My First Rule Of Consumerism Is Never To Buy Anything You Can't Make Your Children Carry.
Children
Firsts
Consumerism
Most Scientists Are Without Exception Adorably Quirky, And One Of The Ways Of Making It More Accessible Was To Try To Get Readers Interested In The Person.
Quirky
Trying
Way
Open Your Refrigerator Door, And You Summon Forth More Light Than The Total Amount Enjoyed By Most Households In The 18th Century. The World At Night, For Much Of History, Was A Very Dark Place, Indeed.
Dark
Night
Light
You Don't Need A Science Degree To Understand About Science. You Just Need To Think About It.
Science
Thinking
Understanding
I'm Not A Natural Story-teller. Put A Keyboard In Front Of Me And I'm Fine, But Stand Me Up In Front Of An Audience And I'm Actually Quite Shy And Reserved.
Shy
Stories
Keyboards
Human Beings Would Split The Atom And Invent Television, Nylon, And Instant Coffee Before They Could Figure Out The Age Of Their Own Planet.
Coffee
Age
Nylon
18th Century Scientists, The French In Particular, Seldom Did Things Simply If An Absurdly Demanding Alternative Was Available.
Alternatives
Scientist
Century
My First Rule Of Travel Is Never To Go To A Place That Sounds Like A Medical Condition And Critz Is Clearly An Incurable Disease Involving Flaking Skin.
Travel
Judging
Skins
For A Long Time, I'd Been Vaguely Fascinated By The Idea That Charles Lindbergh Flew The Atlantic And Babe Ruth Hit 60 Home Runs In The Same Summer.
Summer
Running
Home
Have You Ever Seen Glenn Beck In Operation? It Is The Most Terrifying Thing. It's So Bad That You Think He's Going To Announce In A Minute That It's All A Great Con. He Makes Sarah Palin Look Reasonable And Steady.
Thinking
Looks
Minutes
Most Of What Has Lived On Earth Has Left Behind No Record At All.
Records
Earth
Left Behind
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Coffee
Beer
Cities
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Sorry
Mean
Shopping
To My Mind, The Only Possible Pet Is A Cow. Cows Love You. They Will Listen To Your Problems And Never Ask A Thing In Return. They Will Be Your Friends Forever. And When You Get Tired Of Them, You Can Kill And Eat Them. Perfect.
Love You
Tired
Perfect
Everything Seems To Be Designed For The Benefit Of The Automobile And Not The Benefit Of The Human Being.
Benefits
Malls
Automobile
Everywhere Throughout New England You Find Old, Tumbledown Field Walls, Often In The Middle Of The Deepest, Most Settled- Looking Woods- A Reminder Of Just How Swiftly Nature Reclaims The Land In America.
Wall
Land
America
Even Though Sugar Was Very Expensive, People Consumed It Till Their Teeth Turned Black, And If Their Teeth Didn't Turn Black Naturally, They Blackened Them Artificially To Show How Wealthy And Marvelously Self-indulgent They Were.
Self
People
Black
I Often Feel I'm A Disappointment To People Because They Expect Me To Be The Guy In The Books. When I Sit Next To Someone At A Dinner Party I Can See They Expect Me To Be Quick And Witty, And I'm Not At All.
Witty
Disappointment
Party
Every Kid I Knew Had A Father With A Little Stash Of Men's Magazines Which The Father Thought Was Secret And Which The Kid Knew All About.
Father
Kids
Men
I Have A Small Tattered Clipping That I Sometimes Carry With Meand Pull Out For Purposes Of Privateamusement. It's A Weather Forecast From Thewestern Daily Mail And It Says, In Toto: 'outlook: Dry And Warm, But Cooler With Some Rain.
Rain
Weather
Mail
At The Foot Of The Mountain, The Park Ended And Suddenly All Was Squalor Again. I Was Once More Struck By This Strange Compartmentalization That Goes On In America -- A Belief That No Commercial Activities Must Be Allowed Inside The Park, But Permitting Unrestrained Development Outside, Even Though The Landscape There May Be Just As Outstanding. America Has Never Quite Grasped That You Can Live In A Place Without Making It Ugly, That Beauty Doesn't Have To Be Confined Behind Fences, As If A National Park Were A Sort Of Zoo For Nature.
Zoos
Feet
America
The Average Southerner Has The Speech Patterns Of Someone Slipping In And Out Of Consciousness. I Can Change My Shoes And Socks Faster Than Most People In Mississippi Can Speak A Sentence.
Average
Shoes
People
There Seemed To Be A Mystifying Universal Conspiracy Among Textbook Authors To Make Certain The Material They Dealt With Never Strayed Too Near The Realm Of The Mildly Interesting And Was Always At Least A Long-distance Phone Call From The Frankly Interesting.
Distance
Phones
Long
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Life
Summer
Travel
The Remarkable Position In Which We Find Ourselves Is That We Don't Actually Know What We Actually Know.
Remarkable
Position
Knows
By The Time I Had Finished My Coffee And Returned To The Streets, The Rain Had Temporarily Abated, But The Streets Were Full Of Vast Puddles Where The Drains Where Unable To Cope With The Volume Of Water. Correct Me If I'm Wrong, But You Would Think That If One Nation Ought By Now To Have Mastered The Science Of Drainage, Britain Would Be It.
Rain
Coffee
Thinking
I Still Enjoy Traveling A Lot. I Mean, It Amazes Me That I Still Get Excited In Hotel Rooms Just To See What Kind Of Shampoo They've Left Me.
Mean
Rooms
Kind
I Wanted To Quit And To Do This Forever, Sleep In A Bed And In A Tent, See What Was Over The Next Hill And Never See A Hill Again. All Of This All At Once, Every Moment, On The Trail Or Off.
Sleep
Forever
Bed
After Years Of Patient Study (and With Cricket There Can Be No Other Kind), I Have Decided That There Is Nothing Wrong With The Game That The Introduction Of Golf Carts Wouldn't Fix In A Hurry.
Golf
Years
Games
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Autumn
Green Fields
Sight
My Favourite Fellow Of The Royal Society Is The Reverend Thomas Bayes, An Obscure 18th-century Kent Clergyman And A Brilliant Mathematician Who Devised A Complex Equation Known As The Bayes Theorem, Which Can Be Used To Work Out Probability Distributions. It Had No Practical Application In His Lifetime, But Today, Thanks To Computers, Is Routinely Used In The Modelling Of Climate Change, Astrophysics And Stock-market Analysis.
Science
Work Out
Royal
That's The Trouble With Losing Your Mind; By The Time It's Gone, It's Too Late To Get It Back.
Mind
Too Late
Gone
Every Living Thing Is An Elaboration Of A Single Original Plan. As Humans We Are Mere Increments - Each Of Us A Musty Archive Of Adjustments, Adaptations, Modifications And Providential Tinkerings Stretching Back To 3,8 Billion Years. Remarkably We Are Even Quite Closely Related To Fruit And Vegetables. About Half The Chemical Functions That Take Place In A Banana Are Fundamentally The Same As The Chemical Functions That Place In You. It Cannot Be Said Too Often: All Life Is One. That Is, And I Suspect Will Ever Prove To Be, The Most Profound True Statement There Is.
Years
Vegetables
Profound
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.
Men
Ideas
Sound
I Understand Cricket - What's Going On, The Scoring - But I Can't Understand Why.
Cricket
I Can
I'm Quite Certain That If The Rest Of The World Vanished Overnight And The Development Of Cricket Were Left In Australian Hands, Within A Generation, The Players Would Be Wearing Shorts And Using The Bats To Hit Each Other, And The Thing Is, It'd Be A Much Better Game For It.
Player
Hands
Games
A World Without Newspapers Or A World Where The Newspapers Are Purely Electronic And You Read Them On A Screen Is Not A Very Appealing World.
World
Newspapers
Screens
Houses Aren't Refuges From History. They Are Where History Ends Up.
House
Ends
Refuge
Perhaps It's My Natural Pessimism, But It Seems That An Awfully Large Part Of Travel These Days Is To See Things While You Still Can.
Travel
Memorable
Pessimism
To An American The Whole Purpose Of Living, The One Constant Confirmation Of Continued Existence, Is To Cram As Much As Sensual Pleasure As Possible Into One's Mouth More Or Less Continuously. Gratification, Instant And Lavish, Is A Birthright
Sensual
Purpose
Mouths
Everything That Has Ever Lived, Plant Or Animal, Dates Its Beginning From The Same Primordial Twitch. At Some Point In An Unimaginably Distant Past, Some Little Bag Of Chemicals Fidgeted To Life. It Absorbed Some Nutrients, Gently Pulsed, Had A Brief Existence. This Much May Have Happened Many Times Before. But This Ancestral Packet Did Something Additional And Extraordinary. It Cleaved Itself And Produced An Heir. A Tiny Bundle Of Genetic Material Passed From One Living Entity To Another, And Has Never Stopped Moving Since. It Was The Moment Of Creation For Us All.
Moving
Animal
Past
Clearly, Some Time Ago Makers And Consumers Of American Junk Food Passed Jointly Through Some Kind Of Sensibility Barrier In The Endless Quest For New Taste Sensations. Now They Are A Little Like Those Desperate Junkies Who Have Tried Every Known Drug And Are Finally Reduced To Mainlining Toilet Bowl Cleanser In An Effort To Get Still Higher.
Food
Effort
Drug
I Sat On A Toilet Watching The Water Run Thinking What An Odd Thing Tourism Is. You Fly Off To A Strange Land, Eagerly Abandoning All The Comforts Of Home And Then Expend Vast Quantities Of Time And Money In A Largely Futile Effort To Recapture The Comforts You Wouldn’t Have Lost If You Hadn’t Left Home In The First Place.
Running
Travel
Home
Of All The Things I Am Not Very Good At, Living In The Real World Is Perhaps The Most Outstanding.
Real
World
Good Advice
Entirely Incidentally, A Little-known Fact About Shakespeare Is That His Father Moved To Stratford-upon-avon From A Nearby Village Shortly Before His Son's Birth. Had He Not Done So, The Bard Of Avon Would Instead Be Known As The Rather Less Ringing Bard Of Snitterfield.
Father
Son
Done
You Can Always Tell A Midwestern Couple In Europe Because They Will Be Standing On A Traffic Island In The Middle Of A Busy Intersection Looking At A Windblown Map And Arguing Over Which Way Is West. European Cities, With Their Wandering Streets And Undisciplined Alleys, Drive Midwesterners Practically Insane.
Couple
Cities
Islands
I Hadn't Realized Quite How Extraordinary Charles Lindbergh's Achievement Was In Flying The Atlantic Alone. He Had Never Flown Over Open Water Before, But He Flew Straight To Dingle Bay In Ireland And Then On To Paris, Exactly As Planned.
Paris
Water
Achievement
Life Just Wants To Be; But It Doesn't Want To Be Much.
Want
I Wish I Could Adjust My Voice, But It's Just What's Happened To Me. It's Because I've Lived Abroad For A Long Time, And My Wife Is English And My Kids All Have English Accents, And Every Voice I Hear Is English. I've Never Intentionally Changed My Accent At All.
Kids
Voice
Long
The Human Diet Consists Of Just Nine Plants: Corn, Rice, Wheat, Potatoes, Cassava, Sorghum, Millet, Beans, Barley, Rye And Oats.
Oats
Corn
Nine
This Was 1990, The Year That Communism Died In Europe And It Seemed Strange To Me That In All The Words That Were Written About The Fall Of The Iron Curtain, Nobody Anywhere Lamented That It Was The End Of A Noble Experiment. I Know That Communism Never Worked And I Would Have Disliked Living Under It Myself But None The Less It Seems That There Was A Kind Of Sadness In The Thought That The Only Economic System That Appeared To Work Was One Based On Self Interest And Greed.
Fall
Sadness
Self
English Is Full Of Booby Traps For The Unwary Foreigner. Any Language Where The Unassuming Word Fly Signifies An Annoying Insect, A Means Of Travel, And A Critical Part Of A Gentleman's Apparel Is Clearly Asking To Be Mangled.
Mean
Gentleman
Asking
Columbus Real Achievement Was Managing To Cross The Ocean Successfully In Both Directions. Though An Accomplished Enough Mariner, He Was Not Terribly Good At A Great Deal Else, Especially Geography, The Skill That Would Seem Most Vital In An Explorer.
Real
Ocean
Discovery
I Love The Feeling Of Being Anonymous In A City I've Never Been Before.
Travel
Cities
Feelings
Protons Give An Atom Its Identity, Electrons Its Personality.
Giving
Personality
Identity
I Can Wear A Baseball Cap; I Am Entitled To Wear A Baseball Cap. I Am Genetically Pre-disposed To Wear A Baseball Cap, Whereas Most English People Look Wrong In A Baseball Cap.
Baseball
People
Looks
Australians Are Very Unfair In This Way. They Spend Half Of Any Conversation Insisting That The Country's Dangers Are Vastly Overrated And That There's Nothing To Worry About, And The Other Half Telling You How Six Months Ago Their Uncle Bob Was Driving To Mudgee When A Tiger Snake Slid Out From Under The Dashboard And Bit Him On The Groin, But That It's Okay Now Because He's Off The Life Support Machine And They've Discovered He Can Communicate With Eye Blinks.
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Uncles
Eye
A Third...candidate For Shakespearean Authorship Was Christopher Marlowe. He Was The Right Age (just Two Months Older Than Shakespeare), Had The Requisite Talent, And Would Certainly Have Had Ample Leisure After 1593, Assuming He Wasn't Too Dead To Work.
Two
Age
Leisure
If You Were Designing An Organism To Look After Life In Our Lonely Cosmos, To Monitor Where It Is Going And Keep A Record Of Where It Has Been, You Wouldn't Choose Human Beings For The Job. But Here's An Extrememly Salient Point: We Have Been Chosen, By Fate Or Providence Or Whatever You Wish To Call It. As Far As We Can Tell, We Are The Best There Is. We May Be All There Is. It's An Unnerving Thought That We May Be The Living Universe's Supreme Achievement And Its Worst Nightmare Simultaneously.
Lonely
Jobs
Fate
It's Hard Not To Be Kind Of Pessimistic About Human Beings Generally, Because We Do Tend To Mess Things Up. If You Just Look At The History Of Extinctions, We've Killed Off An Awful Lot Of Animals - And I Don't Think We're Doing A Very Good Job Of Looking After The Planet.
Jobs
Animal
Thinking
I Can't Imagine There Has Ever Been A More Gratifying Time Or Place To Be Alive Than America In The 1950s. No Country Had Ever Known Such Prosperity.
Country
America
Alive
I Have Long Known That It Is Part Of God's Plan For Me To Spend A Little Time With Each Of The Most Stupid People On Earth.
Stupid
Long
People
Language Is More Fashion Than Science, And Matters Of Usage, Spelling And Pronunciation Tend To Wander Around Like Hemlines.
Fashion
Writing
Matter
English Grammar Is So Complex And Confusing For The One Very Simple Reason That Its Rules And Terminology Are Based On Latin, A Language With Which It Has Precious Little In Common.
Latin
Simple
English Grammar
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Stars
Home
Sleep
You Don't Have To Know Anything About Baseball To Respond To Babe Ruth Because He's Just This Magnificent Human Being. And A Really Good Story Because He Was This Kid Who Grew Up Essentially As An Orphan, You Know, Had A Tough Life, And Then He Became The Most Successful Baseball Player Ever. But He Was Also A Really Good Guy.
Baseball
Kids
Successful
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.
Inspirational
Funny
Country
Your Pillow Alone May Be Home To 40 Million Bed Mites. (to Them Your Head Is Just One Large Oily Bon-bon). And Don't Think A Clean Pillow-case Will Make A Difference... Indeed, If Your Pillow Is Six Years Old--which Is Apparently About The Average Age For A Pillow--it Has Been Estimated That One-tenth Of Its Weight Will Be Made Up Of Sloughed Skin, Living Mites, Dead Mites And Mite Dung.
Home
Thinking
Average
If You Go Out On The Appalachian Trail, You Have To Bring So Much More Equipment - A Tent, Sleeping Bag - But If You Go Hiking In England, Or Europe, Generally, Towns And Villages Are Near Enough Together At The End Of The Day You Can Always Go To A Nice Little Inn And Have A Hot Bath And Something To Drink.
Nice
Sleep
Europe
Disassemble The Cells Of A Sponge (by Passing Them Through A Sieve, For Instance), Then Dump Them Into A Solution, And They Will Find Their Way Back Together And Build Themselves Into A Sponge Again. You Can Do This To Them Over And Over, And They Will Doggedly Reassemble Because, Like You And Me And Every Other Living Thing, They Have One Overwhelming Impulse: To Continue To Be.
Cells
Together
Way
It Was An Especially Wonderful Time To Be A Noisy Moron.
Wonderful
Moron
Noisy
There Is No Reason Why We Shouldn't Be Able To Split An Infinitive, Any More Than We Should Forsake Instant Coffee And Air Travel Because They Weren't Available To The Romans.
Coffee
Air
Splits
I Do Find London Exciting. Much As I Hate To Agree With That Tedious Old Git Samuel Johnson, And Despite The Pompous Imbecility Of His Famous Remark About When A Man Is Tired Of London He Is Tired Of Life...i Can't Dispute It.
Hate
Tired
Men
I Ordered A Coffee And A Little Something To Eat And Savored The Warmth And Dryness. Somewhere In The Background Nat King Cole Sang A Perky Tune. I Watched The Rain Beat Down On The Road Outside And Told Myself That One Day This Would Be Twenty Years Ago.
Kings
Rain
Coffee
I Can't Fix The World. If You Want To Make A Difference In Life, You Have To Direct Your Energies In A Focused Way.
Differences
Making A Difference
Energy
Coming Back To Your Native Land After An Absence Of Many Years Is A Surprisingly Unsettling Business, A Little Like Waking From A Long Coma. Time, You Discover, Has Wrought Changes That Leave You Feeling Mildly Foolish And Out Of Touch.
Years
Land
Long
Traveling Is More Fun - Hell, Life Is More Fun - If You Can Treat It As A Series Of Impulses.
Fun
Life Is
Hell
It Is Not True That The English Invented Cricket As A Way Of Making All Other Human Endeavors Look Interesting And Lively; That Was Merely An Unintended Side Effect... It Is The Only Sport That Incorporates Meal Breaks. It Is The Only Sport That Shares Its Name With An Insect. It Is The Only Sport In Which Spectators Burn As Many Calories As Players - More If They Are Moderately Restless.
Sports
Player
Names
In The Countryside, Litter Doesn't Have A Friend. It Doesn't Have Anybody Who's Saying, 'wait A Minute, This Is Really Starting To Get Out Of Control.'
Waiting
Starting
Minutes
Being A Pessimist Is Just Such A Gloomy Way Of Looking At Things, So I Have To Hope For The Best - Life Wouldn't Be Worth Living If We Didn't Have Hope. And I Also Do Think That Human Beings Often Do Do Wonderful, Correct, Brilliant Things. So, On Balance, I'd Like To Be Optimistic About The Future.
Optimistic
Thinking
Balance
When You Tell An Iowan A Joke, You Can See A Kind Of Race Going On Between His Brain And His Expression.
Funny
Humor
Race
There'd Never Been A More Advantageous Time To Be A Criminal In America Than During The 13 Years Of Prohibition. At A Stroke, The American Government Closed Down The Fifth Largest Industry In The United States - Alcohol Production - And Just Handed It To Criminals - A Pretty Remarkable Thing To Do.
Government
Years
America
There Is The Odd Exception, Like Albert Einstein, But As A Breed, Scientists Tend Not Be Very Good At Presenting Themselves.
Odd
Scientist
Very Good
England Was Full Of Words I'd Never Heard Before - Streaky Bacon, Short Back And Sides, Belisha Beacon, Serviettes, High Tea, Ice-cream Cornet.
Ice Cream
Tea
Sides
It Was The Kind Of Pure, Undiffused Light That Can Only Come From A Really Hot Blue Sky, The Kind That Makes Even A Concrete Highway Painful To Behold And Turns Every Distant Reflective Surface Into A Little Glint Of Flame. Do You Know How Sometimes On Very Fine Days The Sun Will Shine With A Particular Intensity That Makes The Most Mundane Objects In The Landscape Glow With An Unusual Radiance, So That Buildings And Structures You Normally Pass Without A Glance Suddenly Become Arresting, Even Beautiful? Well, They Seem To Have That Light In Australia Nearly All The Time.
Beautiful
Australia
Light
We Used To Build Civilizations. Now We Build Shopping Malls.
Badass
Bad Ass
Civilization
You May Not Feel Outstandingly Robust, But If You Are An Average-sized Adult You Will Contain Within Your Modest Frame No Less Than 7 X 10^18 Joules Of Potential Energy—enough To Explode With The Force Of Thirty Very Large Hydrogen Bombs, Assuming You Knew How To Liberate It And Really Wished To Make A Point.
Average
Hydrogen Bomb
Energy
I Really Enjoy Going To A Library And Spending The Day Doing Research - To Me That Is The Most Pleasurable Part Of Writing The Science Book.
Book
Writing
Library
Taxonomy Is Described Sometimes As A Science And Sometimes As An Art, But Really It’s A Battleground.
Art
Taxonomy
Sometimes
I Don't Know Whether I'm Misanthropic. It Seems To Me I'm Constantly Disappointed. I'm Very Easily Disappointed.
Misanthropic
Disappointed
Knows
What Is It About Maps? I Could Look At Them All Day, Earnestly Studying The Names Of Towns And Villages I Have Never Heard Of And Will Never Visit.
Travel
Names
Looks
There Are Only Three Things That Can Kill A Farmer: Lightning, Rolling Over In A Tractor, And Old Age.
Age
Lightning
Rolling Along
As James Surowiecki Noted In A New Yorker Article, Given A Choice Between Developing Antibiotics That People Will Take Every Day For Two Weeks And Antidepressants That People Will Take Every Day For Ever, Drug Companies Not Surprisingly Opt For The Latter. Although A Few Antibiotics Have Been Toughened Up A Bit, The Pharmaceutical Industry Hasn't Given Us An Entirely New Antibiotic Since The 1970s.
Two
People
Choices
America Is A Great Disappointment To Me. As I Said In One Of My Books, Other Societies Create Civilisations; We Build Shopping Malls.
Disappointment
Book
Shopping
The English Invented Cricket To Make Other Human Endeavors Look Interesting.
Interesting
Looks
Cricket
Every Twenty Minutes On The Appalachian Trail, Katz And I Walked Farther Than The Average American Walks In A Week. For 93 Percent Of All Trips Outside The Home, For Whatever Distance Or Whatever Purpose, Americans Now Get In A Car. On Average The Total Walking Of An American These Days - That's Walking Of All Types: From Car To Office, From Office To Car, Around The Supermarket And Shopping Malls - Adds Up To 1.4 Miles A Week, Barely 350 Yards A Day.
Distance
Home
Average
Every Dog On The Face Of The Earth Wants Me Dead.
Dog
Earth
Want
Because We Humans Are Big And Clever Enough To Produce And Utilize Antibiotics And Disinfectants, It Is Easy To Convince Ourselves That We Have Banished Bacteria To The Fringes Of Existence. Don't You Believe It. Bacteria May Not Build Cities Or Have Interesting Social Lives, But They Will Be Here When The Sun Explodes. This Is Their Planet, And We Are On It Only Because They Allow Us To Be.
Clever
Believe
Cities
When The Duke [w.j.c. Scott-bentinck] Died, His Heirs Found All Of The Aboveground Rooms Devoid Of Furnishings Except For One Chamber In The Middle Of Which Sat The Duke's Commode. The Main Hall Was Mysteriously Floor Less. Most Of The Rooms Were Painted Pink. The One Upstairs Room In Which The Duke Had Resided Was Packed To The Ceiling With Hundreds Of Green Boxes, Each Of Which Contained A Single Dark Brown Wig. This Was, In Short, A Man Worth Getting To Know.
Dark
Men
Dukes
Hardly Anyone Ever Leaves. This Is Because Des Moines Is The Most Powerful Hypnotic Known To Man. Outside Town There Is A Big Sign That Says, Welcome To Des Moines. This Is What Death Is Like. There Isn't Really. I Just Made That Up. But The Place Does Get A Grip On You.
Powerful
Men
Doe
A Cough So Robust That I Tapped Into Two New Seams Of Phlegm.
Health
Two
Robust
In Terms Of Adaptability, Humans Are Pretty Amazingly Useless.
Useless
Adaptability
Term
For A Long Time It Puzzled Me How Something So Expensive, So Leading Edge, Could Be So Useless. And Then It Occurred To Me That A Computer Is A Stupid Machine With The Ability To Do Incredibly Smart Things, While Computer Programmers Are Smart People With The Ability To Do Incredibly Stupid Things. They Are, In Short, A Perfect Match.
Stupid
Smart
Technology
As A Rule Of Thumb, I Would Submit That If You Need To Call Your Floss Provider, For Any Reason, You Are Probably Not Ready For This Level Of Oral Hygiene.
Hygiene
Needs
Thumbs
The Real Problem You Get With Humour Is That You Only Have So Many Kinds Of Jokes Within You, And You Mine That Vein A Lot. This Isn't Just Common To Me; It's Anybody Who's Funny.
Real
Veins
Common
You May Find That Your Parents Are The Most Delightful People, But You Don't Want To Live With Them.
People
Parent
May
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.
Nature
Years
Hunters
There Are Things You Just Can't Do In Life. You Can't Beat The Phone Company, You Can't Make A Waiter See You Until He's Ready To See You, And You Can't Go Home Again.
Home
Phones
House
... It Occurred To Me That Never Again Would He Be Seven Years, One Month And Six Days Old, So We Had Better Catch These Moments While We Can.
Years
Months
Six
I'm Definitely An American, Because I Grew Up Here. But I've Lived Very Happily In Britain.
Grew Up
Britain
Grew
Science Has Been Quite Embattled. It's The Most Important Thing There Is. An Arts Graduate Is Not Going To Fix Global Warming. They May Do Other Valuable Things, But They Are Not Going To Fix The Planet Or Cure Cancer Or Get Rid Of Malaria.
Art
Cancer
Important
It Is Unthinkable To Have A British Countryside That Doesn't Have Actual Functioning Farmers Riding Tractors, Cows In Fields, Things Like That.
Riding
Cows
Fields
I Became Quietly Seized With That Nostalgia That Overcomes You When You Have Reached The Middle Of Your Life And Your Father Has Recently Died And It Dawns On You That When He Went He Took Some Of You With Him.
Father
Dawn
Overcoming
But That's The Glory Of Foreign Travel, As Far As I Am Concerned. I Don't Want To Know What People Are Talking About. 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. Suddenly You Are Five Years Old Again. You Can't Read Anything, You Have Only The Most Rudimentary Sense Of How Things Work, You Can't Even Reliably Cross A Street Without Endangering Your Life. Your Whole Existence Becomes A Series Of Interesting Guesses.
Country
Travel
Memorable
English Grammar Is So Complex And Confusing For The One Very Simple Reason That Its Rules And Terminology Are Based On Latin - A Language With Which It Has Precious Little In Common. In Latin, To Take One Example, It Is Not Possible To Split An Infinitive. So In English, The Early Authorities Decided, It Should Not Be Possible To Split An Infinitive Either. But There Is No Reason Why We Shouldn't, Any More Than We Should Forsake Instant Coffee And Air Travel Because They Weren't Available To The Romans.
Latin
Coffee
Writing
What This Means In Practice Is That If You Are Not A Born Worrier You Have Nothing To Worry About (though Of Course You Wouldn't Be Worrying Anyway), Whereas If You Are A Worrier By Nature There Is Absolutely Nothing You Can Do About It, So You May As Well Stop Worrying, Except Of Course You Can't.
Mean
Practice
Worry
The First Book I Did - The First Successful Book - Was A Kind Of A Travel Book, And Publishers In Britain Encouraged Me To Do More.
Book
Successful
Firsts
The Universe Is Not Only Queerer Than We Suppose; It Is Queerer Than We Can Suppose
Funny
Knowledge
Science
I'm Not Funny In Person. I Mean I'm Really Not. I'm One Of Those People Who Always Screw Up Anecdotes.
Mean
People
Anecdotes
When I Awoke It Was Daylight. The Inside Of My Tent Was Coated In A Curious Flaky Rime, Which I Realized After A Moment Was All Of My Nighttime Snores, Condensed And Frozen And Pasted To The Fabric, As If Into A Scrapbook Of Respiratory Memories.
Memories
Fabric
Frozen
As My Father Always Used To Tell Me, 'you See, Son, There's Always Someone In The World Worse Off Than You.' And I Always Used To Think, 'so?
Father
Son
Thinking
Tune Your Television To Any Channel It Doesn't Receive And About 1 Percent Of The Dancing Static You See Is Accounted For By This Ancient Remnant Of The Big Bang. The Next Time You Complain That There Is Nothing On, Remember That You Can Always Watch The Birth Of The Universe.
Dancing
Tunes
Watches
South Dakota... Is Like The World's First Drive-through Sensory Deprivation Chamber.
World
Firsts
Deprivation
Physicists Are Atoms' Way Of Thinking About Atoms.
Thinking
Atoms
Way
Most Of The Time I Am Sunk In Thought, But At Some Point On Each Walk There Comes A Moment When I Look Up And Notice, With A Kind Of First-time Astonishment, The Amazing Complex Delicacy Of The Words, The Casual Ease With Which Elemental Things Come Together To Form A Composition That Is—whatever The Season, Wherever I Put My Besotted Gaze—perfect.
Perfect
Together
Firsts
Yes, U.s. Travelers Dress Better. The British Are Always So Conspicuous In Hot Climates. They Don't Seem To Wear Shorts. American Men Seem To Be Comfortable Wearing Hot-weather Clothing.
Men
Weather
Climate
Des Moines Is Like Your Typical American City; It's Just These Concentric Circles Of Malls, Built Outward From The City.
Cities
Circles
Typical
To Me, The Greatest Invention Of My Lifetime Is The Laptop Computer And The Fact That I Can Be Working On A Book And Be In An Airport Lounge, In A Hotel Room, And Continue Working; I Fire Up My Laptop, And I'm In Exactly The Same Place I Was When I Left Home - That, To Me, Is A Miracle.
Book
Home
Fire
America Is A Very Seductive Place In Terms Of Lifestyle And Comfort, But It Wasn't For Me.
America
Seductive
Comfort
Out Of The Thirty Thousand Types Of Edible Plants Thought To Exist On Earth, Just Eleven—corn, Rice, Wheat, Potatoes, Cassava, Sorghum, Millet, Beans, Barley, Rye, And Oats—account For 93 Percent Of All That Humans Eat, And Every One Of Them Was First Cultivated By Our Neolithic Ancestors.
Oats
Wheat
Potatoes
It Was An Odd Situation. For A Century And A Half, Men Got Rid Of Their Own Hair, Which Was Perfectly Comfortable, And Instead Covered Their Heads With Something Foreign And Uncomfortable. Very Often It Was Actually Their Own Hair Made Into A Wig. People Who Couldn't Afford Wigs Tried To Make Their Hair Look Like A Wig.
Men
Hair
People
The Taipan Is The One To Watch Out For. It Is The Most Poisonous Snake On Earth, With A Lunge So Swift And A Venom So Potent That Your Last Mortal Utterance Is Likely To Be: "i Say, Is That A Sn--
Snakes
Utterance
Earth
Taking A Scenic Route In Southeast Iowa Is Like Talking About A Good Barry Manilow Album. You Have To Make Certain Allowances.
Talking
Iowa
Albums
Take A Moment From Time To Time To Remember That You Are Alive. I Know This Sounds A Trifle Obvious, But It Is Amazing How Little Time We Take To Remark Upon This Singular And Gratifying Fact. By The Most Astounding Stroke Of Luck An Infinitesimal Portion Of All The Matter In The Universe Came Together To Create You And For The Tiniest Moment In The Great Span Of Eternity You Have The Incomparable Privilege To Exist.
Luck
Together
Sound
In France, A Chemist Named Pilatre De Rozier Tested The Flammability Of Hydrogen By Gulping A Mouthful And Blowing Across An Open Flame, Proving At A Stroke That Hydrogen Is Indeed Explosively Combustible And That Eyebrows Are Not Necessarily A Permanent Feature Of One's Face.
Science
Flames
Eyebrows
Nearly A Quarter Of American Men Were In The Armed Forces. The Rest Were In School, In Prison, Or Were George W. Bush.
School
Men
Prison
When You Consider It From A Human Perspective, And Clearly It Would Be Difficult For Us To Do Otherwise, Life Is An Odd Thing. It Couldn't Wait To Get Going, But Then, Having Gotten Going, It Seemed In Very Little Hurry To Move On.
Moving
Perspective
Waiting
It Is A Slightly Arresting Notion That If You Were To Pick Yourself Apart With Tweezers, One Atom At A Time, You Would Produce A Mound Of Fine Atomic Dust, None Of Which Had Ever Been Alive But All Of Which Had Once Been You.
Life
Science
Dust
Not Writing The Same Kind Of Book Over And Over Again Is To Me The Real Pleasure Of What I Do.
Real
Book
Writing
We Forget Just How Painfully Dim The World Was Before Electricity. A Candle, A Good Candle, Provides Barely A Hundredth Of The Illumination Of A Single 100 Watt Light Bulb.
Light
Illumination
World
It Sometimes Occurs To Me That The British Have More Heritage Than Isgood For Them.
Heritage
Sometimes
British
The Whole Of The Global Economy Is Based On Supplying The Cravings Of Two Per Cent Of The World's Population.
Two
Population
World
A Sign In The Yard Of A Church Next Door Said Christ Is The Answer. (the Question, Of Course, Is: What Do You Say When You Strike Your Thumb With A Hammer?)
Doors
Church
Yards
I Turned To My Own Bunk And Examined It With A Kind Of Appalled Fascination. If The Mattress Stains Were Anything To Go By, A Previous User Had Not So Much Suffered From Incontinence As Rejoiced In It. He Had Evidently Included The Pillow In His Celebrations.
Travel
Fascination
Bunk
I Think It's Only Right That Crazy People Should Have Their Own City, But I Cannot For The Life Of Me See Why A Sane Person Would Want To Go There.
Crazy
Thinking
Should Have
Germans Are Flummoxed By Humor, The Swiss Have No Concept Of Fun, The Spanish Think There Is Nothing At All Ridiculous About Eating Dinner At Midnight, And The Italians Should Never, Ever Have Been Let In On The Invention Of The Motor Car.
Inspirational
Sarcastic
Fun
"croissant": However You Choose To Pronounce It At Home, It Is Perhaps Worth Nothing That Outside The United States, The Closer You Can Come To Saying "kwass-ohn," The Sooner You Can Expect To Be Presented With One.
Home
United States
Croissants
Because Time Moves More Slowly In Kid World ... It Goes On For Decades ... It Is Adult Life That Is Over In A Twinkling.
Moving
Kids
Adults
If A Potato Can Produce Vitamin C, Why Can't We? Within The Animal Kingdom Only Humans And Guinea Pigs Are Unable To Synthesize Vitamin C In Their Own Bodies. Why Us And Guinea Pigs? No Point Asking. Nobody Knows.
Animal
Pigs
Asking
Anyone Who Has Read My Books Will Know That I Don't Tend To Use Guides When I Am Travelling. It's Not A Pride Thing, But It Is Certainly A Fact.
Book
Pride
Use
The Number Of People On Whose Cooperative Efforts Your Eventual Existence Depends Has Risen To Approximately 1,000,000,000,000,000,000, Which Is Several Thousand Times The Total Number Of People Who Have Ever Lived.
Numbers
People
Effort
Boston's Freeway System Is Insane. It Was Clearly Designed By A Person Who Had Spent His Childhood Crashing Toy Trains.
Boston
Childhood
Insane
Four Times I Was Honked At For Having The Temerity To Proceed Through Town Without The Benefit Of Metal.
Journey
Hiking
Benefits
Book Tours Are Really Kind Of Fun. You Get To Stay In Nice Hotels, You Are Driven Everywhere In Big Silver Cars, You Are Treated As If You Are Much More Important Than You Are, You Can Eat Steak Three Times A Day At Someone Else's Expense, And You Get To Talk Endlessly About Yourself For Weeks At A Stretch.
Fun
Nice
Book
No One Knows, Incidentally, Why Australia's Spiders Are So Extravagantly Toxic; Capturing Small Insects And Injecting Them With Enough Poison To Drop A Horse Would Appear To Be The Most Literal Case Of Overkill. Still, It Does Mean That Everyone Gives Them Lots Of Space.
Horse
Mean
Australia
I Don't Know Whether I'm Misanthropic. It Seems To Me I'm Constantly Disappointed. I'm Very Easily Disappointed. Disappointed In The Things That People Do; Disappointed In The Things That People Construct. I Want Things To Be Better All The Time.
People
Want
Misanthropic
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.
Self
People
Would Be
If You Believe In God, It's Much More Fantastic To Believe That He Created This Universe Billions Of Years Ago And Set In Motion This Long Train Of Activities That Eventually Resulted In Us. I Think That's So Much More Satisfying, More Thrilling, Than The Idea That It Was All Done In Seven Days.
Believe
Thinking
Years
From An Evolutionary Point Of View, Sex Is Really Just A Reward Mechanism To Encourage Us To Pass On Our Genetic Material.
Sex
Views
Rewards
Isn´t It Strange How Wealth Is Always Wasted On The Rich?
Strange
Wealth
Rich
Physics Is Really Nothing More Than A Search For Ultimate Simplicity, But So Far All We Have Is A Kind Of Elegant Messiness.
Simplicity
Kind
Physics
I Had Always Thought That Once You Grew Up You Could Do Anything You Wanted - Stay Up All Night Or Eat Ice-cream Straight Out Of The Container.
Night
Ice Cream
Childhood
It's An Unnerving Thought That We May Be The Living Universe's Supreme Achievement And Its Worst Nightmare Simultaneously.
Worst Nightmares
Achievement
May
If This Book Has A Lesson, It Is That We Are Awfully Lucky To Be Here-and By 'we' I Mean Every Living Thing. To Attain Any Kind Of Life In This Universe Of Ours Appears To Be Quite An Achievement. As Humans We Are Doubly Lucky, Of Course: We Enjoy Not Only The Privilege Of Existence But Also The Singular Ability To Appreciate It And Even, In A Multitude Of Ways, To Make It Better. It Is A Talent We Have Only Barely Begun To Grasp.
Book
Mean
Appreciate
Think Of A Single Problem Confronting The World Today. Disease, Poverty, Global Warming... If The Problem Is Going To Be Solved, It Is Science That Is Going To Solve It. Scientists Tend To Be Unappreciated In The World At Large, But You Can Hardly Overstate The Importance Of The Work They Do. If Anyone Ever Cures Cancer, It Will Be A Guy With A Science Degree. Or A Woman With A Science Degree.
Cancer
Science
Thinking
The Upshot Of All This Is That We Live In A Universe Whose Age We Can't Quite Compute, Surrounded By Stars Whose Distances We Don't Altogether Know, Filled With Matter We Can't Identify, Operating In Conformance With Physical Laws Whose Properties We Don’t Truly Understand.
Stars
Distance
Law
The Tearoom Lady Called Me Love. All The Shop Ladies Called Me Love And Most Of The Men Called Me Mate. I Hadn't Been Here Twelve Hours And Already They Loved Me.
Men
Twelve
Hours
For Most Of Us The Rules Of English Grammar Are At Best A Dimly Remembered Thing. But Even For Those Who Make The Rules, Grammatical Correctitude Sometimes Proves Easier To Urge Than To Achieve. Among The Errors Cited In This Book Are A Number Committed By Some Of The Leading Authorities Of This Century. If Men Such As Fowler And Bernstein And Quirk And Howard Cannot Always Get Their English Right, Is It Reasonable To Expect The Rest Of Us To?
Book
Writing
Men
Understanding Quotes: Their Essence and Application

Quotes, or quotations, are powerful tools in communication, encapsulating ideas, emotions, and wisdom in concise expressions. They serve various purposes across different contexts, from academic writing to everyday conversation.

1. Defining Quotes

A quote is a repetition of someone else's statement or thoughts. It can be a direct replication of words spoken or written by another individual, often used to support arguments, provide evidence, or convey profound insights.


2. The Importance of Quotes

2.1. Enhancing Credibility

Incorporating quotes from authoritative sources can bolster the credibility of your work. By referencing experts or primary sources, you demonstrate thorough research and a solid foundation for your arguments.


2.2. Providing Evidence

Quotes serve as concrete evidence to support claims. In academic and professional writing, they validate points made, offering readers a basis to trust the information presented.


2.3. Conveying Emotions and Perspectives

Quotes can encapsulate emotions and perspectives succinctly. They allow writers to express complex feelings or viewpoints through the words of others, often more eloquently than paraphrasing.


3. Types of Quotes

3.1. Direct Quotes

Direct quotes involve copying the exact words from a source, enclosed in quotation marks. They are used when the original wording is significant or particularly well-expressed.


3.2. Indirect Quotes (Paraphrasing)

Indirect quotes restate the original message in your own words. While not enclosed in quotation marks, they still require proper attribution to the original source.


3.3. Block Quotes

Block quotes are lengthy direct quotations, formatted as a separate block of text. They are typically used for quotes exceeding a certain length, varying by citation style. For instance, in APA style, quotes longer than 40 words are formatted as block quotes.



4. Proper Usage of Quotes


4.1. Contextual Relevance

Ensure that the quote you choose is relevant to the topic and adds value to your content. Avoid inserting quotes solely for decorative purposes.


4.2. Integration into Your Writing

Seamlessly integrate quotes into your writing. Introduce them appropriately and follow up with analysis or commentary to connect them to your main points.


4.3. Attribution and Citation

Always attribute quotes to their original authors and provide proper citations according to the required style guide (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.).


5. Common Mistakes to Avoid


5.1. Overusing Quotes

Relying too heavily on quotes can overshadow your voice. Use them sparingly to support your arguments, not replace them.


5.2. Lack of Analysis

Presenting a quote without analysis or explanation can leave readers questioning its relevance. Always follow up with your interpretation or discussion.


5.3. Misquoting or Taking Out of Context

Ensure that quotes are accurate and not taken out of context, as this can mislead readers and undermine your credibility.



6. Quotes in Different Contexts


6.1. Academic Writing

In academic writing, quotes are used to support arguments, provide evidence, and engage with existing literature. Proper citation is crucial to avoid plagiarism.


6.2. Journalism

Journalists use quotes to provide firsthand accounts, add authenticity, and present multiple perspectives within a story.


6.3. Literature and Creative Writing

In literature, quotes can be used to convey character voices, themes, and stylistic elements. They enrich narratives and provide depth to storytelling.



7. Punctuation and Formatting


Understanding the correct punctuation and formatting of quotes is essential:


Quotation Marks: Always enclose direct quotes within quotation marks.


Punctuation Placement: In American English, periods and commas are placed inside quotation marks, while colons and semicolons are placed outside.


Block Quotes: For longer quotes, format them as block quotes without quotation marks, and indent the entire block.



8. Ethical Considerations


Ethical use of quotes involves accurate representation, proper attribution, and respect for intellectual property. Misuse can lead to plagiarism, which carries serious academic and professional consequences.

9. Tools for Managing Quotes


Utilize tools like citation generators and plagiarism checkers to manage quotes effectively. These tools help ensure proper formatting and originality in your writing.



Conclusion


Quotes are invaluable in enriching content, providing evidence, and conveying complex ideas succinctly. When used appropriately, they enhance the quality and credibility of your writing. Always ensure relevance, proper integration, and ethical usage to maximize their impact.


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