The physical shape of the adult crab represents the successful interaction of many processes.

If a mosquito has a soul, it is mostly evil.

If nihilism is necessarily true, then gunk is impossible. But, as Sider argues, because gunk is both conceivable and possible, nihilism is false, or at best a contingent truth.

At two a.m. I awoke, my mind on fire with the question of lions.

Director Jerry Rees described the main message is the film asks is: “what would it be like to be an appliance, and feel good when you’re useful, and help people…”?

He first told me that he wanted to be a corporate lawyer when we were about 13. Not a criminal litigator, mind you, but a corporate lawyer. He already knew! What was this but Socratic self-reflection of the highest order? 

There is more to heaven and earth, I should hope, than what is known by a pair of Berkeley sociologists.

Once, when asked by an interviewer if he had ever smoked crack, Vollmann memorably responded, “I guess that I would say that I have.”

On taking the role, Saldana said, “I was just excited to be asked to join by James Gunn and to also play someone green. I’ve been blue before [in Avatar].”

Specifically, researchers asked this question over a series of 11 studies: “To what extent do you agree with this statement: I am a narcissist.’” The participants — and there were about 2,200 of them in total — were told to answer on a scale of one to seven. As it turned out, their self-scoring results closely matched scores on the traditional method of gauging narcissism, a 40-question survey called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory.