Micro Quotes

“She had been living like a hermit herself, in a cramped, seedy apartment in Somerville, spending long hours in the lab. All-nighters had become a regular thing. She didn't have any close friends, didn't go out on dates, didn't even go to the movies by herself. She had sacrificed a normal life in order to get a PhD, and become a scientist.”
― Michael Crichton, Micro

“What is it about nature that is so terrifying to the modern mind? Why is it so intolerable? Because nature is fundamentally indifferent. It’s unforgiving, uninterested. If you live or die, succeed or fail, feel pleasure or pain, it doesn’t care. That’s intolerable to us. How can we live in a world so indifferent to us. So we redefine nature. We call it Mother Nature when it’s not a parent in any real sense of the term.”
― Michael Crichton, Micro

“Whoever has the power in society determines what can be studied, determines what can be observed, determines what can be thought.”
― Michael Crichton, Micro

“Nature was not gentle or nice. There was no such thing as mercy in the natural world. You don’t get any points for trying. You either survive or you don’t.”
― Michael Crichton, Micro

“If nothing else, school teaches that there is an answer to every question; only in the real world do young people discover that many aspects of life are uncertain, mysterious, and even unknowable. If you have a chance to play in nature, if you are sprayed by a beetle, if the color of a butterfly's wing comes off on your fingers, if you watch a caterpillar spin its cocoon-- you come away with a sense of mystery and uncertainty. The more you watch, the more mysterious the natural world becomes, and the more you realize how little you know. Along with its beauty, you may also come to experience its fecundity, its wastefulness, aggressiveness, ruthlessness, parasitism, and its violence. These qualities are not well-conveyed in textbooks.”
― Michael Crichton, Micro

“there was no objective truth, only the truth that’s established by power.”
― Michael Crichton, Micro

“These Americans played with fire. Hydrogen bombs, megapower lasers, killer drones, shrunken micro-people…Americans were demon-raisers. Americans awakened technological demons they couldn’t control, yet they seemed to enjoy the power.”
― Michael Crichton, Micro

“drinking a Coke and laughing, waving the camera away. “That’s the couple,” Watanabe said. “Grace and Bobby”
― Michael Crichton, Micro

“American soldiers had basically fought the war on Spam; Spam and an atomic bomb had guaranteed American victory.”
― Michael Crichton, Micro

“The room jounced, and boomed, and they were flung out of the bunks”
― Michael Crichton, Micro

“I’d like to have a look,” Watanabe said. He got in his brown unmarked Ford Crown Victoria and drove it at an easy ninety along the freeway around Pearl Harbor.”
― Michael Crichton, Micro

“Also known as a filmmaker and the creator of ER, he remains the only writer to have had the number one book, movie, and TV show simultaneously.”
― Michael Crichton, Micro

“He suspected Drake had done something with the students. He had not believed Drake would murder them; that would be too obvious, and Drake was a clever man. So Eric had assumed that Drake had made them disappear in the micro-world temporarily,”
― Michael Crichton, Micro

“There is a Zen saying that a wise man can live comfortably in hell.”
― Michael Crichton, Micro

“The odor of the flowers resembled semen,”
― Michael Crichton, Micro

“And you know it. Whoever has the power in society determines what can be studied, determines what can be observed, determines what can be thought. Scientists fall in line with the dominant power structure. They have to, because the power structure pays the bills. You don’t play ball with the power structure, you don’t get money for research, you don’t get an appointment, you don’t get published, in short you don’t count anymore. You’re out. You might as well be dead.”
― Michael Crichton, Micro

“MINUTE CREATURES swarm around us…objects of potentially endless study and admiration, if we are willing to sweep our vision down from the world lined by the horizon to include the world an arm’s length away. A lifetime can be spent in a Magellanic voyage around the trunk of a tree. —E. O. WILSON”
― Michael Crichton, Micro

“Indoctrinating children in proper environmental thought was a hallmark of the green movement, and so children were being instructed to protect something about which they knew nothing at all.”
― Michael Crichton, Micro

“A hotel loomed up like a first-order battleship from outer space. He saw two giants standing on a balcony, a man and a woman, holding drinks in their hands. His plane rushed toward them uncontrollably, carried in the wind. Their heads were bigger than Mount Rushmore. The man put his drink down and reached toward the woman, and pulled down the shoulder strap of her dress, exposing a colossal breast with an erect nipple standing out six feet. The man fondled it with a hand of horrifying size, and their faces closed in for a kiss… As his plane rushed toward a collision, he screamed and fought the controls, and passed between their noses under emergency power, propeller churning, and the plane was caught in an eddy of wind and swept around the corner of the building and out of sight.”
― Michael Crichton, Micro

“but one thing above all—one reason stands out—we need the gods to protect us from loneliness. But why is loneliness so intolerable? We can’t stand to be alone—why not? Because human beings are children, that’s why. “But those are all disguises we create for nature. You know how Danny loves to tell us that the science narrative privileges the balance of power. How there’s no objective truth, except for who’s got the power. Power tells the story and everyone accepts it as truth, because power rules.” He took a breath. “But who’s got the balance of power now, Danny? Can you feel it? Take a deep breath. Feel it? No? Then I’ll tell you. The balance of power lies in the hands of the entity that always holds the balance of power—nature. Nature, Danny. Not us. All we can do is go for the ride and try to hang on.”
― Michael Crichton, Micro

“getting”
― Michael Crichton, Micro

“at”
― Michael Crichton, Micro

“Mull.”
― Michael Crichton, Micro

“field is two million times greater than the strength”
― Michael Crichton, Micro

“the”
― Michael Crichton, Micro

“The spider venom was Ebola in thirty seconds.”
― Michael Crichton, Micro