Keith

“MacArthur himself was more interested in the similarities among phenomena, because similarities reveal the workings of regular processes....I've already quoted MacArthur's statement that to do science "is to search for repeated patterns, not simply to accumulate facts.”
― Quammen, David

“Exile must be a terrible thing, said Norton sympathetically.

"Actually," said Amalfitano, "now I see it as a natural movement, something that, in its way, helps to abolish fate, or what is generally thought of as fate."

"But exile," said Pelletier, "is full of inconveniences, of skips and breaks that essentially keep recurring and interfere with anything you try to do that's important."

"That's just what I mean by abolishing fate," said Amalfitano. "But again, I beg your pardon.”
― Roberto Bolaño, 2666

“The dodo itself stands as the best emblem of this general truth - that insular evolution often involves transforming an adventurous, high-flying ancestor species into a grounded descendant, no longer capable of going anywhere but extinct. It's our reminder that insular evolution, for all its wondrousness, tends to be a one-way tunnel toward doom.”
― Quammen, David

“That sense of time, ah, the diseased man's sense of time, what treasure hidden in a desert cave.”
― Roberto Bolaño, 2666