English is full of booby traps for the unwary foreigner. Any language where the unassuming word fly signifies an annoying insect, a means of travel, and a critical part of a gentleman's apparel is clearly asking to be mangled.

The whole of the global economy is based on supplying the cravings of two per cent of the world's population.

In three minutes, 98 percent of all the matter there is or will ever be has been produced. We have a universe

I can't imagine there has ever been a more gratifying time or place to be alive than America in the 1950s. No country had ever known such prosperity.

Woods are not like other spaces. To begin with, they are cubic. Their trees surround you, loom over you, press in from all sides. Woods choke off views & leave you muddled & without bearings. They make you feel small & confused & vulnerable, like a small child lost in a crowd of strange legs. Stand in a desert or prairie & you know you are in a big space. Stand in the woods and you only sense it. They are vast, featureless nowhere. And they are alive.

Language is more fashion than science, and matters of usage, spelling and pronunciation tend to wander around like hemlines.

... it occurred to me that never again would he be seven years, one month and six days old, so we had better catch these moments while we can.