The pathways that have led to our evolution are quirky, improbable, unrepeatable and utterly unpredictable.

Life is a copiously branching bush, continually pruned by the grim reaper of extinction, not a ladder of predictable progress.

I hardly recognize what I do well. I just do it.

The history of life is a tale of decimation and later stabilization of few surviving anatomies, not a story of steady expansion and progress.

The causes of life's history [cannot] resolve the riddle of life's meaning.

We are the offspring of history, and must establish our own paths in this most diverse and interesting of conceivable universes—one indifferent to our suffering, and therefore offering us maximum freedom to thrive, or to fail, in our own chosen way.

I strongly reject any conceptual scheme that places our options on a line, and holds that the only alternative to a pair of extreme positions lies somewhere between them. More fruitful perspectives often require that we step off the line to a site outside the dichotomy.