“Physicists are atoms’ way of thinking about atoms.”

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.

I have three kids, the oldest is 18 and her friends are going to see it The Aristocrats because they told her they’re going to see it, especially her guy friends.

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.

Therefore, I think that in the celebration of the 50 years of the present reign, there must be research on the changes that the country has undergone, and in the future, it could be used as a lesson for our future actions.

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.

Every dog on the face of the earth wants me dead.

The writer’s life: Hard days, lots of work, no money, too much silence. Nobody’s fault. You chose it.

To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.

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.

Falling out of a posture means you are human; getting back into the posture means you are a yogi.

Absolute brain size does not tell you everything or possibly sometimes even much. Elephants and whales both have brains larger than ours, but you wouldn’t have much trouble outwitting them in contract negotiations.

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.

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.

An awful lot of England is slowly eroding, in ways that I find really distressing, and an awful lot of it is the hedgerows…

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.

A significant fraction of thru-hikers reach Katahdin, then turn around and start back to Georgia. They just can’t stop walking, which kind of makes you wonder.

The problems of language here are really serious. We wish to speak in some way about the structure of the atoms. But we cannot speak about atoms in ordinary language.

We’re all nothing but unified arrangements of atoms and particles, drifting around.

You sharpen the human appetite to the point where it can split atoms with its desire; you build egos the size of cathedrals; fiber-optically connect the world to every eager impulse.

If you like, there is a Guinness time. The reason for that it’s fundamental. It is not that we have to keep shortening the time. It turns out all molecular and biological systems have speeds of the atoms move inside them.

There is no evil in the atom; only in men’s souls.

Even the structure of the atom has been found by the mind.

Even the structure of the atom has been found by the mind. Therefore the mind is subtler than the atom. That which is behind the mind, namely the individual soul, is subtler than the mind.

My atoms love you atoms, it’s chemistry.