Spencer Scott

“One price you pay for being taken for a god is the unabated dreaminess of your acolytes.”
― Philip Roth, American Pastoral

“The diversity-stability law, states that ecosystems that include more species are more stable through time... The law of dependence states that all species depend on other species. And we, as humans, are probably dependent on more species than any other species ever to exist. Meanwhile, just because we depend on other species does not mean nature depends on us. Long after we go extinct, the rules of life will continue.”
― Rob Dunn, A Natural History of the Future: What the Laws of Biology Tell Us about the Destiny of the Human Species

“In my experience, people who study climate change are planning for this last scenario in their own daily lives. At work, they write about the RCP2.6 path and how to get on it. At home, in their free time, they fight to get their communities on the RCP2.6 path. But when their day is over and they are sitting on the couch, they make choices that reflect their worry that we are probably on the RCP8.5 path. They look online at properties in, say, Canada or Sweden. They talk to real estate agents and ask questions like, "Does it have year-round flowing water?" They have conversations with their partners about which countries have stable governance and won't have malaria. With insider information and disposable income, they are preparing in advance to flee.”
― Rob Dunn, A Natural History of the Future: What the Laws of Biology Tell Us about the Destiny of the Human Species

“Where had they learned to converse and to dance? I couldn't converse or dance. Everybody knew something I didn't know. The girls looked so good, the boys so handsome. I would be too terrified to even look at one of those girls, let alone be close to one. To look into her eyes or dance with her would be beyond me.

And yet I know that what I saw wasn't as simple and good as it appeared. There was a price to be paid for it all, a general falsity, that could be easily believed, and could be the first step down a dead-end street.”
― Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye