Christmas tree stands are the work of the devil and they want you dead.
To an American the whole purpose of living, the one constant confirmation of continued existence, is to cram as much as sensual pleasure as possible into one’s mouth more or less continuously. Gratification, instant and lavish, is a birthright.
Geologists are never at a loss for paperweights.
It is a curious feature of our existance that we come from a planet that is very good at promoting life but even better at extinguishing it.
It’s an unnerving thought that we may be the living universe’s supreme achievement and its worst nightmare simultaneously.
I became quietly seized with that nostalgia that overcomes you when you have reached the middle of your life and your father has recently died and it dawns on you that when he went he took some of you with him.
It was an especially wonderful time to be a noisy moron.
The universe is not only queerer than we suppose; it is queerer than we can suppose.
In three minutes, 98 percent of all the matter there is or will ever be has been produced. We have a universe.
Human beings would split the atom and invent television, nylon, and instant coffee before they could figure out the age of their own planet.
What is it about maps? I could look at them all day, earnestly studying the names of towns and villages I have never heard of and will never visit...
When you consider it from a human perspective, and clearly it would be difficult for us to do otherwise, life is an odd thing. It couldn’t wait to get going, but then, having gotten going, it seemed in very little hurry to move on.
99.99 percent of all species that have ever lived are no longer with us.
Look at a globe and what you are seeing really is a snapshot of the continents as they have been for just one-tenth of 1 per cent of the earths history.
Hunters will tell you that a moose is a wily and ferocious forest creature. Nonsense. A moose is a cow drawn by a three-year-old.
Everywhere throughout New England you find old, tumbledown field walls, often in the middle of the deepest, most settled- looking woods- a reminder of just how swiftly nature reclaims the land in America.
To my mind, the only possible pet is a cow. Cows love you. They will listen to your problems and never ask a thing in return. They will be your friends forever. And when you get tired of them, you can kill and eat them. Perfect.
As the saying goes, it takes all kinds to make the world go around, though perhaps some shouldn’t go quite so far around it as others.
As a rule of thumb, I would submit that if you need to call your floss provider, for any reason, you are probably not ready for this level of oral hygiene.
When I awoke it was daylight. The inside of my tent was coated in a curious flaky rime, which I realized after a moment was all of my nighttime snores, condensed and frozen and pasted to the fabric, as if into a scrapbook of respiratory memories.