The historical circumstance of interest is that the tropical rain forests have persisted over broad parts of the continents since their origins as stronghold of the flowering plants 150 million years ago.

We should preserve every scrap of biodiversity as priceless while we learn to use it and come to understand what it means to humanity.

The genes hold culture on a leash. The leash is very long, but inevitably values will be constrained in accordance with their effects on the human gene pool. The brain is a product of evolution. Human behavior-like the deepest capacities for emotional respone which drive and guide it-is the circuitous technique by which human genetic material has been and will be kept intact.

I had reached a point in my career in which I was ready to try something new in my writing, and the idea of a novel has always been in the back of my mind.

Biological diversity is the key to the maintenance of the world as we know it... Eliminate one species, and another increases to take its place. Eliminate a great many species, and the local ecosystem starts to decay.

It's always been a dream of mine, of exploring the living world, of classifying all the species and finding out what makes up the biosphere.

Far more important throughout the rest of science is the ability to form concepts, during which the researcher conjures images and processes by intuition.