Jim

“As Mary delivered what was to be her last lecture about the Galapagos Islands, she would be stopped mid-sentence for five seconds by a doubt which, if expressed in words, might have come out something like this: "Maybe I'm just a crazy lady who had wandered off the street and into this classroom and started explaining the mysteries of life to these people. And they believe me, although I am utterly mistaken about simply everything."

She had to wonder, too, about all the supposedly great teachers of the past, who, although their brains were healthy, had turned out to be as wrong as Roy about what was really going on.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Galápagos

“A human being is primarily a bag for putting food into; the other functions and faculties may be more godlike, but in point of time they come afterwards. A man dies and is buried, and all his words and actions are forgotten, but the food he has eaten lives after him in the sound or rotten bones of his children. I think it could be plausibly argued that changes of diet are more important than changes of dynasty or even of religion....Yet it is curious how seldom the all-importance of food is recognized. You see statues everywhere to politicians, poets, bishops, but none to cooks or bacon-curers or market gardeners.”
― George Orwell, The Road To Wigan Pier: (Authorized Orwell Edition): A Mariner Books Classic

“For some people, getting pregnant is as easy as catching cold." And there certainly was an analogy there: Colds and babies were both caused by germs which loved nothing so much as a mucous membrane.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Galápagos