We really depend on viruses for our complete survival.

If you're looking for your own idea of your own identity you know the human genome may not be the best place to look for it. You're just looking at a bunch of viruses.

One of the big challenges now is to figure out just how many viruses there really are in the human genome. So far the estimate is 8.3% of our genome is virus, but it actually could be a lot higher.

Viruses don't just make us sick. They can actually sometimes end up in our genomes.

The hand is where the mind meets the world.

The reason that viruses are so hard to fight, the reason for example we need a flu virus every year is that they evolve very fast.

We may be sucking in all sorts of viruses and we really don't know the full range of them. Maybe we've got flu virus inside of us. That's a possibility. Maybe we're part flu.

Borna virus is not a retrovirus. It doesn't actually insert its own genes into our cells. What it does is just hangs out near our DNA and uses some of the molecular machinery to copy itself.

Evolution is a large political controversy as to what should be taught in the schools. But there is no scientific controversy that we evolved when we talk about evidence from fossils and DNA.

Evolution has led to some populations of people being able to digest milk without much trouble when they're adults as well.

Everybody can digest milk when they're little.

Humans are the reproductive organs of technology.

It is an understatement to say that in this society injustices abound: In truth it is itself the quintessence of injustice.

If the poor, for example, because they are more in number, divide among themselves the property of the rich,- is not this unjust? . . this law of confiscation clearly cannot be just.

A painter can hang his pictures, but a writer can only hang himself.

Try to be of some use to others.

Tall, completely jacked, steroids, like multiple growth hormones. That's, like, the type that I'm attracted to.

Worldly riches are like nuts; many a tooth is broke in cracking them, but never is the stomach filled with eating them.

Isn't my fur stole pitiful? How unsuccessful can a girl look? People think I'm wearing anchovies. The worst of it is, I trapped these under my own sink.

Use sin as it will use you; spare it not, for it will not spare you; it is your murderer, and the murderer of the world: use it, therefore, as a murderer should be used. Kill it before it kills you.

One night last summer, all the killers in my head assembled on a stage in Massachusetts to sing show tunes.