Classically, very few people have considered that cleanliness is next to godliness. A rank loincloth and hair in an advanced state of matted entanglement have generally been the badges of office of prophets whose injunction to disdain earthly things starts with soap.

Apes had it worked out. No ape would philosophize, "The mountain is, and is not." They would think, "The banana is. I will eat the banana. There is no banana. I want another banana.

Evolution was far more thrilling to me than the biblical account. Who would not rather be a rising ape than a falling angel? To my juvenile eyes, Darwin was proved true every day. It doesn't take much to make us flip back into monkeys again.

Most species do their own evolving, making it up as they go along, which is the way Nature intended.

The Kraken stirs. And ten billion sushi dinners cry out for vengeance.

You can't inspire people with facts. They need a cause. They need a symbol.

The more you think about it, the more amazing the everyday world of human beings becomes: most of it doesn't actually exist at all.