“I have a Ph.D. in cell biology. And that’s really manual labor. I mean, experimental science, you do it with your hands. So it’s very different. You’re out there in a lab, cleaning test tubes, and it just wasn’t that fascinating.”

What you don’t necessarily realize when you start selling your time by the hour is that what you’re really selling is your life.

Take motherhood: nobody ever thought of putting it on a moral pedestal until some brash feminists pointed out, about a century ago, that the pay is lousy and the career ladder nonexistent.

The one regret I have about my own abortions is that they cost money that might otherwise have been spent on something more pleasurable, like taking the kids to movies and theme parks.

war is, in some not yet entirely defined sense, a self-replicating pattern of behavior, possessed of a dynamism not unlike that of living things.

in our culture, the professional, and largely white, middle class is taken as a social norm – a bland and neutral mainstream – from which every other group or class is ultimately a kind of deviation.

Transcendent Oneness does not require self-examination, self-help, or self-work. It requires self-loss.

Of all the nasty outcomes predicted for women’s liberation… none was more alarming, from a feminist point of view, than the suggestion that women would eventually become just like men.

Personally, I can’t see why it would be any less romantic to find a husband in a nice four-color catalogue than in the average downtown bar at happy hour.

Wars produce warlike societies, which in turn make the world more dangerous for other societies, which are thus recruited into being war-prone themselves.

So even though I consider myself a fairly upbeat person, energetic and things like that, I never do very well on happiness tests.

Anyone who has invented a better mousetrap, or the contemporary equivalent, can expect to be harassed by strangers demanding that you read their unpublished manuscripts or undergo the humiliation of public speaking, usually on remote Midwestern campuses.

I’m not a nice person.

It was a real surprise to me to come across the evidence that Christianity might once have been a danced religion. Certainly, some of the early church leaders thought this was great and spoke of what seems to have been circle dancing, perhaps around an altar.

it used to be almost the first question (just after ‘Can you type?’) in the standard female job interview: ‘Are you now, or have you ever, contemplated marriage, motherhood, or the violent overthrow of the U.S. government?

In matters of the heart as well, a certain level of negativity and suspicion is universally recommended. You may try to project a thoroughly positive outlook in order to attract a potential boyfriend, but you are also advised to Google him.

Heads of state are notoriously ill prepared for their mature careers; think of Adolf Hitler (landscape painter), Ho Chi Minh (seaman), and our own Ronald Reagan.

I support stem cell research, including embryonic stem cell research.

I find that if I use my time well and take care of my mind/body when I’m outside of work, then I feel more supported throughout my day. So, instead of waking up and going straight for my cell phone or running to the gym.

You know the theory of cell irritability? If you take an amoeba cell and poke it a thousand times, it will change and then re-form into its original shape. And then, the thousandth time you poke this amoeba.

I believe fuel cells will finally end the 100-year reign of the internal combustion engine. . . Fuel cells could be the predominant automotive power source in 25 years.

I remember one point seeing I had like 60-some different cell phones. I know I only use one.

God has given to every one of us more than fourteen billion cells and connections in our brain. Now why would God give us such a complex organ system unless He expects us to use it?

Everything is grounded in mystery. Everything is swimming, and the stable does not exist.

“Christ” states that those who see themselves as “separate” and not “divine” hinder humanity’s ability to spiritually evolve. Those who deny their own “divinity” are like “cancer cells” in the body of God.