It {Darwin's theory of evolution] was a concept of such stunning simplicity, but it gave rise, naturally, to all of the infinite and baffling complexity of life. The awe it inspired in me made the awe that people talk about in respect of religious experience seem, frankly, silly beside it. I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.

In order to fly, all one must do is simply miss the ground.

He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.

WOKING (vb.) To enter the kitchen with the precise determination to perform something only to forget what it is just before you do it.

The film project has been “twenty years of constipation,” and he likens the Hollywood process to “trying to grill a steak by having a succession of people coming into the room and breathing on it.”

And so the Universe ended.

Stotting is jumping upward with all four legs simultaneously. My advice: do not die until you've seen a large black poodle stotting in the snow.