Everything we care about lies somewhere in the middle, where pattern and randomness interlace.

Ideas that require people to reorganize their picture of the world provoke hostility.

Every new molecule would be surrounded by its own spirals and flame like projections, and those, inevitably, would reveal molecules tinier still, always similar, never identical, fulfilling some mandate of infinite variety, a miracle of miniaturisation in which every new detail was sure to be a universe of its own, diverse and entire.

I really don't think of myself as a science writer.