Natalie Angier > Quotes

“We are made of stardust; why not take a few moments to look up at the family album?”
― Natalie Angier, The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science

“Women never bought Freud's idea of penis envy: who would want a shotgun when you can have an automatic?”
― Natalie Angier, Woman: An Intimate Geography

“Scientists have discovered that the small brave act of cooperating with another person, of choosing trust over cynicism, generosity over selfishness, makes the brain light up with quiet joy.”
― Natalie Angier

“The clitoris not only applauds when a women flaunts her mastery; it will give a standing ovation. In the multiple orgasm, we see the finest evidence that our lady Klitoris helps those who help themselves. It may take many minutes to reach the first summit, but once there the lusty mountaineer finds wings awaiting her. She does noy need to scramble back to the ground before scaling the next peak, but can glide like a raptor on currents of joy.”
― Natalie Angier, Woman: An Intimate Geography

“Perhaps eggs are like neurons, which also are not replenished in adulthood: they know too much. Eggs must plan the party. Sperm need only to show up- wearing top hat and tails, of course. ”
― Natalie Angier, Woman: An Intimate Geography

“We are all yeses. We are worthy enough, we passed inspection, we survived the great fetal oocyte extinctions. In that sense, at least -- call it a mechanospiritual sense -- we are meant to be. We are good eggs, every one of us.”
― Natalie Angier, Woman: An Intimate Geography

“Touch is... one of the most ancient transactions, a defiance of the plasma membrane and the loneliness it brought.”
― Natalie Angier, Woman: An Intimate Geography

“I'm an Atheist. I don't believe in God, Gods, Godlets or any sort of higher power beyond the universe itself, which seems quite high and powerful enough to me. I don't believe in life after death, channeled chat rooms with the dead, reincarnation, telekinesis or any miracles but the miracle of life and consciousness, which again strike me as miracles in nearly obscene abundance. I believe that the universe abides by the laws of physics, some of which are known, others of which will surely be discovered, but even if they aren't, that will simply be a result, as my colleague George Johnson put it, of our brains having evolved for life on this one little planet and thus being inevitably limited. I'm convinced that the world as we see it was shaped by the again genuinely miraculous, let's even say transcendent, hand of evolution through natural selection.”
― Natalie Angier

“You have your opinion, I have mine, and it takes all kinds of nuts and dips to make a party, right?”
― Natalie Angier, The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science

“What is wrong with looking muscular? Muscles are beautiful. Strength is beautiful. Muscle tissue is beautiful. It is metabolically, medically, and philosophically beautiful. Muscles retreat when they're not used, but they will always come back if you give them good reason. No matter how old you get, your muscles never lose hope. Few cells of the body are as capable as muscle cells are of change and reformation, of achievement and transcendence.”
― Natalie Angier, Woman: An Intimate Geography

“Nobody knows what the whales may have to click and clack about, but it could be a form of voting-time to stop here and synchronously dive down in search of deep water squid, now time to resurface, move on, dive again. Clans also seem to caucus on which males they like and will mate with more or less as a group and which ones to collectively spurn. By all appearances, female sperm whales are terrible size queens. Over the generations, they have consistently voted in favor of enhanced male mass. Their dream candidate nowadays is some fellow named Moby, and he's three times their size.”
― Natalie Angier

“We may love men and we may live with men, but some of them have said stupendously inaccurate things about us, our bodies, and our psyches.”
― Natalie Angier, Woman: An Intimate Geography

“Giving a girl the impression that girlhood is an extended bounce on Barney's knee is like prepping a young gazelle for life on the Serengeti by dipping it in cream.”
― Natalie Angier, Woman: An Intimate Geography

“Eternal love is a myth, but we make our myths, and we love them to death.”
― Natalie Angier, Woman: An Intimate Geography

“Our minds hurtled outward in all directions. We became absurdly creative, Homo artifactus, intolerant of bare cave walls and naked clay pots.”
― Natalie Angier, Woman: An Intimate Geography

“The brain is an organ of aggression, and there are many roads to this Rome of imagined conquests — so many that mental disorders, regardless of their particulars, often result in a derangement of our aggressive drive. Schizophrenics stand on the streetcorner screaming obscenely at passersby; depressives lie in their beds screaming mutely at themselves. Our gentle aggressions, the drive to be, prods us out of bed in the morning and draws us toward each other. And in each other we find what our aggressive brain desires: love. As we are wired for aggression, so we are wired to love. We are a lavishly loving species, aggressively sentimental. We are tirelessly in pursuit of fresh targets for our love. We love our children so long that they come to despise us for it. We love friends, books... We love answers. We love yesterday and next year. We love gods, for a god is there when all else fails, and God can keep all conduits of love alive — erotic, maternal, paternal, euphoric, infantile.”
― Natalie Angier, Woman: An Intimate Geography

“They talk about myths: the myth that links testosterone to libido, for example, in both men and women. If the myth were true, then these women should have no sex drive; they can’t, after all, respond to the testosterone their bodies produce. Some sex researchers have said as much about AIS patients—that they’re frigid, uninterested, dead in bed. The women themselves come close to spitting in rage at that sort of talk. Whether or not they manage to inflate their vaginas sufficiently to have intercourse, their erotic nature remains intact. They fantasize about sex. They are orgasmic. They lust when there is somebody worth lusting after.”
― Natalie Angier, Woman: An Intimate Geography

“If your doctor has no experience with hysteroscopic myomectomies, find one who does; the procedure is the best first-line attack against symptomatic fibroids.”
― Natalie Angier, Woman: An Intimate Geography

“the empty-closet theory of the breast: if it’s there, it will be stuffed.”
― Natalie Angier, Woman: An Intimate Geography

“When people talk of the indelibility of a strong memory, they speak of recalling exactly where they were when Kennedy was shot or the Challenger space shuttle exploded. But what a woman really remembers is her first period; now there’s a memory seared into the brain with the blowtorch of high emotion.”
― Natalie Angier, Woman: An Intimate Geography

“it’s better to be sullen and strong than sullen and weak.”
― Natalie Angier, Woman: An Intimate Geography

“A woman’s breasts welcome illusion and the imaginative opportunities of clothing.”
― Natalie Angier, Woman: An Intimate Geography

“The uterus is a part of the endocrine system, the macramé of glands, organs, and brain structures that secrete and respond to hormones”
― Natalie Angier, Woman: An Intimate Geography

“Janus”
― Natalie Angier, Woman: An Intimate Geography

“The brain is never fixed. It is a moving target. Your hormones don’t make you do anything. Habit and circumstance can have a more profound effect on behavior than anything hormonal. A person who is accustomed to deference will be obeyed into old age, whatever her or his estrogen or testosterone or androstenedione levels may be doing or failing to do. A tomcat that sprayed your house with territorial and reproductive resolve before being neutered may well continue spraying when his testicles are gone. He has learned how to do it, and though the impetus to start spraying may have come with a pubertal surge in testosterone, he no longer needs the hormone to know (as cats know, for they are infinitely wise) that a tomcat must leave a spackle of pong wherever he goes.”
― Natalie Angier, Woman: An Intimate Geography

“Most keep their condition secret from all but a few close friends. Interestingly, many of them say the thing they regret most is not their inability to have children but the lack of menstruation, the event they see as a monthly voucher of femaleness.”
― Natalie Angier, Woman: An Intimate Geography

“High-density lipoprotein is not really cholesterol but a carrier of cholesterol, able to absorb cholesterol particles and other fats from the blood and donate them to tissues if needed, or to the liver for processing and excretion if not.”
― Natalie Angier, Woman: An Intimate Geography

“the pinkish peritoneum, the springy membrane that encloses and protects other organs.”
― Natalie Angier, Woman: An Intimate Geography

“What is wrong with looking muscular? Muscles are beautiful. Strength is beautiful. Muscle tissue is beautiful. It is metabolically, medically, and philosophically beautiful. Muscles retreat when they’re not used, but they will always come back if you give them good reason. No matter how old you get, your muscles never lose hope. Few cells of the body are as capable as muscle cells are of change and reformation, of achievement and transcendence… Women need muscle, as much as they can muster. They need muscle to shield their light bones, and they need muscle to weather illness. And being strong in a blunt way, a muscleheaded way, is easier than being skilled at a sport. It is a democratic option, open to the klutzes and the latecomers, and women should seize the chance to become cheaply, fowzily strong, because the chance exists, and let’s be honest, we don’t have many. Being strong won’t make you happy or fulfilled, but it’s better to be sullen and strong than sullen and weak”
― Natalie Angier, Woman: An Intimate Geography

“We are of the universe, and by studying the universe we ultimately turn the mirror on ourselves.”
― Natalie Angier, The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science