I guess I'm a hopeful optimist, because to be a pessimist is to be suicidal.

Writing is sweat and drudgery most of the time. And you have to love it in order to endure the solitude and the discipline.

He would have lied to himself as facilely as an alcoholic lies to himself to justify the 10 a.m. tumbler of vodka : it may be early here, but in Baghdad it's almost evening.

Reputations rise and fall almost as regularly as the tides.

Without sharks, you take away the apex predator of the ocean, and you destroy the entire food chain

Oceanography is a terrific career because gradually we seem to be coming around to realize that we had better become as acquainted with the seventy percent of our planet that is covered by water as we are with the dark side of the moon.

If man doesn't learn to treat the oceans and the rain forest with respect, man will become extinct.