It hurts the spirit, somehow, to read the word environments, when the plural means that there are so many alternatives there to be sorted through, as in a market, and voted on.

It is from the progeny of this parent cell that we all take our looks; we still share genes around, and the resemblance of the enzymes of grasses to those of whales is in fact a family resemblance.

The capacity to blunder slightly is the real marvel of DNA. Without this special attribute, we would still be anaerobic bacteria and there would be no music.

Statistically, the probability of any one of us being here is so small that you'd think the mere fact of existing would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise.

In real life, every field of science is incomplete, and most of them - whatever the record of accomplishment during the last 200 years - are still in their very earliest stages.

We owe our lives to the sun... How is it, then, that we feel no gratitude?

The greatest single achievement of nature to date was surely the invention of the molecule DNA.

It is in our genes to understand the universe if we can, to keep trying even if we cannot, and to be enchanted by the act of learning all the way.

I would send the complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach into outer space on the Voyager spacecraft. But that would be boasting.

Animals have genes for altruism, and those genes have been selected in the evolution of many creatures because of the advantage they confer for the continuing survival of the species.

We leave traces of ourselves wherever we go, on whatever we touch.

Loneliness tortures many if not most of the elderly more intensely and more frequently than it torments many if not most of us who will never be or have not yet been pushed or pulled into old age.

It's the sense of what family is at the dinner table. It was the joy of knowing mother was in the kitchen making our favorite dish. I wish more people would do this and recall the joy of life.

As an actor, I know that any feelings you're showing are manufactured. But I still don't want to fool my mind into thinking my wife's into another guy.

One of the most modern pretenders to inspiration is the Book of Mormon. I could not blame you should you laugh outright while I read aloud a page from that farrago.

How to begin to educate a child. First rule: leave him alone. Second rule: leave him alone. Third rule: leave him alone. That is the whole beginning.

You are you, and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful. If not, it can't be helped.

The smylere with the knyf under the cloke.

I risked getting my tyres nicked by going to Robbie Fowler's home in Liverpool!

The great end of being is to harmonize man with the order of things, and the church has been a good pitch-pipe, and may be so still.

Who alone suffers suffers most i' th' mind, Leaving free things and happy shows behind; But then the mind much sufferance doth o'erskip When grief hath mates, and bearing fellowship.