111 Quotes by David Quammen

Of course anyone who truly loves books buys more of them than he or she can hope to read in one fleeting lifetime. A good book, resting unopened in its slot on a shelf, full of majestic potentiality, is the most comforting sort of intellectual wallpaper.

The swallow that hibernates underwater is a creature called yearning.

Dmitri was the mole.”"We never used that word. That’s a new word,” Sparrow quibbles. “It’s a spy-novel word.

History is a fable agreed upon.

Alternatively, anyone who favors Intelligent Design in lieu of evolution might pause to wonder why God devoted so much of His intelligence to designing malarial parasites.

Vast areas of old forest have been cut, or chained down with bulldozers, to make way for cattle ranching and urban sprawl. People have planted orchards, established urban parks, landscaped their yards with blossoming trees, and created other unintended enticements amid the cities and suburbs. 'So bats have decided that, as their native habitat is disappearing, as climate is becoming more variable, and their food source is becoming less diverse, it's easier to live in an urban area.

Dicho de la manera más tajante: las presiones y disrupciones ecológicas de origen humano sitúan a los patógenos animales en contacto creciente con las poblaciones humanas, al tiempo que nuestra tecnología y comportamiento diseminan esos patógenos cada vez más amplia y más rápidamente.

¿Estará la próxima gran pandemia causada por un virus?¿Saldrá de un bosque tropical o de un mercado en el sur de China?¿Matará a treinta o cuarenta millones de personas?

La gente celebró el final del brote, pero los más informados lo celebraron con cautela. El SARS-CoV no se había ido, solo estaba escondido.Podía volver.