Some things you don't have to promise. You just do.

I was a slave to something he believed to be silly and superstitious: the idea that all life was worth defending and that nothing justified surrender to the forces of destruction.

A child has little defense against the sight of a parent laid low. Parents, like the earth beneath our feet and the sun above our heads, are immutable objects, eternal and reliable. If one should fall, who might vouch the sun itself won't fall, burning, into the sea?

My first favourite book was Are You My Mother? A picture book about a lost bird. After that my favourites changed almost yearly. I loved everything by Roald Dahl, but my favourite was probably Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. A librarian gave me a first edition of that book, which I treasure.

A miscalculation is not negligence, nor prudence a crime. I am a scientist. I base my action or inaction upon probability and evidence. There is a reason we call science a discipline! Inferior minds bolt or build pyres to roast the witches in their midst!

And red is not the color of apples or roses or the dresses that pretty girls wear in the summertime. That is not the color of red at all.

When you look death in the eye and death blinks first, nothing seems impossible.