Romans park their cars the way I would park if I had just spilled a beaker of hydrochloric acid on my lap.

Every atom you possess has almost certainly passed through several stars and been part of millions of organisms on its way to becoming you. We are each so atomically numberous and so vigorously recycled at death that a significant number of our atoms-up to a billion for each of us, it has been suggested-probably once belonged to Shakespeare. A billion more each came from Buddha and Genghis Khan and Beethoven, and any other historical figure you care to name.

Most of what has lived on Earth has left behind no record at all.

Boston's freeway system is insane. It was clearly designed by a person who had spent his childhood crashing toy trains.

... 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.

The upshot of all this is that we live in a universe whose age we can't quite compute, surrounded by stars whose distances we don't altogether know, filled with matter we can't identify, operating in conformance with physical laws whose properties we don’t truly understand.

England was full of words I'd never heard before - streaky bacon, short back and sides, Belisha beacon, serviettes, high tea, ice-cream cornet.