193 Quotes by Hope Jahren

I had worked and waited for this day. In solving this mystery I had also proved something, at least to myself, and I finally knew what real research would feel like. But as satisfying as it was, it still stands out as one of the loneliest moments of my life. On some deep level, the realization that I could do good science was accompanied by the knowledge that I had formally and terminally missed my chance to become like any of the women that I had ever known. In.

Did the very first flowers make the dinosaurs sneeze?

A plant that lives where it should not is simply a pest, but a plant that thrives where it should not live is a weed. We don’t resent the audacity of the weed, as every seed is audacious; we resent its fantastic success. Humans are actively creating a world where only weeds can live and then feigning shock and outrage upon finding so many.

America says it loves science, but it sure as hell doesn’t want to pay for it.

My lab is a place where it matters if I get hurt.

Looking up, you notice that the leaves at the top of any tree are smaller, on average, than the leaves at the bottom. This allows sunlight to be caught near the base whenever the wind blows and parts the upper branches.

A seed is alive while it waits. Every acorn on the ground is just as alive as the three-hundred-year-old oak tree that towers over it. Neither the seed nor the old oak is growing; they are both just waiting. Their waiting differs, however, in that the seed is waiting to flourish while the tree is only waiting to die.

And where did the stones come from anyway, when they stoned people? Did people collect them on the way to the scene? About how many stones did each thrower figure that he needed? Did they examine each one they picked up, discarding and retaining them based on some criterion? Did women get to throw too, or did they just simper on the periphery, as depicted by Raphael?

As a tiny, living part of the scientific collective, I’ve sat alone countless nights in the dark, burning my metal candle and watching a foreign world with an aching heart. Like anyone else who harbors precious secrets wrought from years of searching, I have longed for someone to tell.