BEFORE I DISCOVERED THE miracles of science, magic ruled the world.
It's this mood, these sentiments - the excitement of exploration and the surprises and delights of travel to foreign locales - that I hope to inspire with this book.
The nobility of the human spirit grows harder for me to believe in. War, zealotry, greed, malls, narcissism. I see a backhanded nobility in excessive, impractical outlays of cash prompted by nothing loftier than a species joining hands and saying “I bet we can do this. ” Yes, the money could be better spent on Earth. But would it? Since when has money saved by government red-lining been spent on education and cancer research? It is always squandered. Let’s squander some on Mars. Let’s go out and play.
It is the mind that speaks a woman's heart, not the vaginal walls.
Death. It doesn't have to be boring.
The writing is always the easy part, provided I can get the good material. It's the getting of the good material that's a challenge.
The simplest strategy for bouts of noxious flatus is to not care. Or perhaps to take advantage of a gastroenterologist I know: get a dog. (To blame. )
Some jobs are worse than actual wives. Ad agency vs. Matrimony, for instance: Even the most capricious and demanding spouse is not going to divorce you for refusing to spend forty hours a week making up lies about toilet paper.
Loyalty to the school to which your parents pay to send you seemed to me like feeling loyalty to Selfridges.
A non-standard dialect is as valid communication system as the standard
I think science and religion should be separate.