Traveling makes you realize what an immeasurably nice place much of America could be if only people possessed the same instinct for preservation as they do in Europe.

Human beings would split the atom and invent television, nylon, and instant coffee before they could figure out the age of their own planet.

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

I'm definitely an American, because I grew up here. But I've lived very happily in Britain.

Because we humans are big and clever enough to produce and utilize antibiotics and disinfectants, it is easy to convince ourselves that we have banished bacteria to the fringes of existence. Don't you believe it. Bacteria may not build cities or have interesting social lives, but they will be here when the Sun explodes. This is their planet, and we are on it only because they allow us to be.

"Croissant": However you choose to pronounce it at home, it is perhaps worth nothing that outside the United States, the closer you can come to saying "kwass-ohn," the sooner you can expect to be presented with one.

I could spend my life arriving each evening in a new city.