He was a fast and proficient chemist and so was I. The shrink says she doesn't question that. But what every scientist knows—you can't just be proficient; you have to have insight.

I am supposed to be helping her prepare for the GRE. Instead, we spend most of the time talking about color. The color of my clothes and shoes. The color of other people's clothes and shoes. The color of the sky when the sun has dipped just low enough to cause red light to bend the most and then, voilà, a sunset.

But, I tell myself, Weight is just an artifact of gravity. If this were a jazz club on the moon, I would weigh less.

The first rule of chem lab is to never heat a closed system or it will explode.

The optimist sees the glass half full. The pessimist sees the glass half empty. The chemist sees the glass completely full, half in liquid state and half gaseous, both of which are probably poisonous.

You must love chemistry even when it is not working. You must love chemistry unconditionally.

An atom is mostly made up of empty space. If you remove the empty space from every atom, the entire world's human population could fit inside a sugar cube.

I am certain that Eric will get the job. His career path is very straight, like that of an arrow to its target. If I were to draw my path out, it would look like a gas particle flying around in space.