Nonfiction-wha t the hell, that just says, this is nongrapefruit we're having this morning.

On the geological time scale, a human lifetime is reduced to a brevity that is too inhibiting to think about deep time. ... Geologists ... see the unbelievable swiftness with which one evolving species on the Earth has learned to reach into the dirt of some tropical island and fling 747s across the sky ... Seeing a race unaware of its own instantaneousness in time, they can reel off all the species that have come and gone, with emphasis on those that have specialized themselves to death.

He liked to go from A to B without inventing letters between.

Catch and release fishing may be cruelty masquerading as political correctness

I used to sit in class and listen to the terms come floating down the room like paper airplanes.

I can't stand a sentence until it sounds right.

A writer has to have some kind of compulsive drive to do his work. If you don't have it, you'd better find another kind of work, because it's the only compulsion that will drive you through the psychological nightmares of writing.