Entirely incidentally, a little-known fact about Shakespeare is that his father moved to Stratford-upon-Avon from a nearby village shortly before his son's birth. Had he not done so, the Bard of Avon would instead be known as the rather less ringing Bard of Snitterfield.

I mused for a few moments on the question of which was worse, to lead a life so boring that you are easily enchanted, or a life so full of stimulus that you are easily bored.

Taxonomy is described sometimes as a science and sometimes as an art, but really it’s a battleground.

South Dakota... is like the world's first drive-through sensory deprivation chamber.

I was heading to Nebraska. Now there's a sentence you don't want to say too often if you can possibly help it.

Energy is liberated matter, matter is energy waiting to happen.

Australians are very unfair in this way. They spend half of any conversation insisting that the country's dangers are vastly overrated and that there's nothing to worry about, and the other half telling you how six months ago their Uncle Bob was driving to Mudgee when a tiger snake slid out from under the dashboard and bit him on the groin, but that it's okay now because he's off the life support machine and they've discovered he can communicate with eye blinks.