When people asked him why he didn't work with those viruses, he replied, I don't particularly feel like dying.

If equations are trains threading the landscape of numbers, then no train stops at pi.

Once the cells in a biological machine stop working, it can never be started again. It goes into a cascade of decay, falling toward disorder and randomness. Except in the case of viruses. They can turn off and go dead. Then, if they come in contact with a living system, they switch on and multiply. (194)

In biology, nothing is clear, everything is too complicated, everything is a mess, and just when you think you understand something, you peel off a layer and find deeper complications beneath. Nature is anything but simple.

The earth is attempting to rid itself of an infection by human parasite.

He liked the loneliness of inner space, the sense of being forgotten by the world.

You can’t fight off Ebola the way you fight off a cold. Ebola does in ten days what it takes AIDS ten years to accomplish.