The laws of biology are written in the language of diversity.

In addition I wanted to write a Southern novel, because I'm a Southerner.

If everyone agreed to become vegetarian, leaving little or nothing for livestock, the present 1.4 billion hectares of arable land (3.5 billion acres) would support about 10 billion people.

Our brain is mapping the world. Often that map is distorted, but it's a map with constant immediate sensory input.

What we need is an electronic encyclopedia of life, with one page for each species. On each page is given everything known about that species.

Each of these [bacterial] species are masterpieces of evolution. Each has persisted for thousands to millions of years. Each is exquisitely adapted to the environment in which it lives, interlocked with other species to form ecosystems upon which our own lives depend in ways we have not begun even to imagine.

Genius is the summed production of the many with the names of the few attached for easy recall.