244 Quotes by Randall Munroe

Once I got married, I started working from an office. I found that having somewhere to go that isn’t my house is mentally helpful: ‘This is the place where I answer email and write blog posts,’ and ’over there is the place where I do the dishes.

Magnitude -15 A drifting mote of dust coming to rest on a table Sometimes it’s nice not to destroy the world for a change.

Q. Is it possible to build a jetpack using downward-firing machine guns? – Rob B A. I WAS SORT OF surprised to find that the answer was yes! But to really do it right, you’ll want to talk to the Russians.

Periodic Wall of the Elements Q. What would happen if you made a periodic table out of cube-shaped bricks, where each brick was made of the corresponding element?

Cook’s The Science of Good Cooking was also helpful.

In a billion years, Earth will become a second Venus.

Sometimes it’s nice not to destroy the world for a change.

Mutations pop up all over the place, but our redundant chromosomes help blunt this effect. By avoiding inbreeding, a population reduces the odds that rare and harmful mutations will pop up at the same place on both sides of the chromosome.

Could you boil tea if you just stirred it hard enough? No. The first problem is power. The amount of power in question, 700 watts, is about a horsepower, so if you want to boil tea in two minutes, you’ll need at least one horse to stir it hard enough.