Quotes by Richard Preston - Page 2

If ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, then children are somewhat closer to our roots as primates in the arboreal forest. Humans appear to be the only primates that I know of that are afraid of heights. All other primates, when they're scared, they run up a tree, where they feel safe.
Richard Preston / Writer
Humans
Roots
Safe
Scared
Tree
Afraid
Appear
Closer
Somewhat
Forest
Heights
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Life on the planet is being homogenized by the expanding human population and the frequent and rapid movement of people and goods, which carry invasive organisms with them. These invasives often flourish in their new ecosystems because, like the woolly adelgid, they have escaped their predators.
Richard Preston / Writer
Ecosystems
Expanding
Goods
Human Population
Movement
Organisms
Population
Life People New
Carry
Escaped
Flourish
Frequent
Homogenized
Planet
Predators
Rapid
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Redwood time moves at a more stately pace than human time. To us, when we look at a redwood tree, it seems to be motionless and still, and yet redwoods are constantly in motion, moving upward into space, articulating themselves and filling redwood space over redwood time, over thousands of years.
Richard Preston / Writer
Articulating
Filling
Moving
Pace
Tree
Constantly
Motion
Redwood
Stately
Thousands
Thousands Of Years
Upward
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Here's what's terrifying about Ebola. Ebola is invisible. It's a monster without a face. With the science that we have now, we can perceive Ebola as being not one thing but as a swarm, and the swarm is moving through the human population and expanding its numbers. It has the qualities of a monster.
Richard Preston / Writer
Expanding
Human Population
Invisible
Numbers
Perceive
Population
Monster
Terrifying
Qualities
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Once the cells in a biological machine stop working, it can never be started again. It goes into a cascade of decay, falling toward disorder and randomness. Except in the case of viruses. They can turn off and go dead. Then, if they come in contact with a living system, they switch on and multiply. (194)
Richard Preston / Writer
Cells
Fall
Viruses
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If a portion of a redwood is rotting, the redwood will send roots into its own form and draw nutrients out of itself as it falls apart. If we had redwood-like biology, if we got a touch of gangrene in our arm, then we could just, you know, extract the nutrients and the moisture out of it until it fell off.
Richard Preston / Writer
Biology
Nutrients
Roots
Rotting
Touch
Apart
Arm
Draw
Extract
Portion
Redwood
Send
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I had actually finished the manuscript of 'The Wild Trees' and turned it in to Random House when all of a sudden word came. Michael Taylor and his colleague, Chris Atkins, another explorer, have just knocked one out of the park. They found the world's tallest tree. The tree is named Hyperion, 379.1 feet tall.
Richard Preston / Writer
Feet
Finished
House
Tree
Named
Came
Wild
Chris
Colleague
Michael
Explorer
Word
Manuscript
Park
Sudden
Tallest
Taylor
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I was surfing the Internet, and I came across a school in Atlanta where you could learn how to climb trees with ropes the way the pros do. It sounded terrific, and so I went down there, and I began to learn these kind of rarified techniques for how you get up and down trees while using special ropes and gear.
Richard Preston / Writer
Atlanta
Internet
Special
Surfing
Terrific
Up And Down
Across
Began
Climb
Gear
Pros
Ropes
Techniques
Trees
Using
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Scientific facts are often described in textbooks as if they just sort of exist, like nickels someone picked up on the street. But science at the cutting edge, conducted by sharp minds probing deep into nature, is not about self-evident facts. It is about mystery and not knowing. It is about taking huge risks.
Richard Preston / Writer
Cutting
Cutting Edge
Not Knowing
Probing
Textbooks
Edge
Picked
Scientific
Self-Evident
Sharp
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When you get up into the crown of a redwood tree, you lose sight of the ground entirely. You also lose sight of the sky. And you're in a lost world. You're in an undiscovered, unexplored ecosystem, somewhere between Heaven and Earth, filled with forms of life, not all of which have been given names by scientists yet.
Richard Preston / Writer
Filled
Given
Heaven
Lost
Sight
Sky
Tree
Somewhere
Forms
Crown
Ecosystem
Entirely
Ground
Redwood
Scientists
Undiscovered
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The earth's biosphere could be thought of as a sort of palace. The continents are rooms in the palace; islands are smaller rooms. Each room has its own decor and unique inhabitants; many of the rooms have been sealed off for millions of years. The doors in the palace have been flung open, and the walls are coming down.
Richard Preston / Writer
Continents
Doors
Islands
Rooms
Flung
Inhabitants
Millions Of Years
Palace
Sealed
Smaller
The Doors
Walls
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When a parasite moves to a new habitat, it can find new hosts through a process called the trans-species jump. Often, the new host has no resistance; it and the parasite haven't had time to adjust to each other through natural selection (it is frequently not in the best interest of a parasite to kill its host quickly).
Richard Preston / Writer
Habitat
Host
Natural Selection
Resistance
Selection
Adjust
Frequently
Hosts
Jump
Parasite
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As life forms, viruses are just inherently interesting. It's the microworld - this universe of life too small for us to see - but it's profoundly complicated, and immensely powerful. Ebola is like a beautiful and frightening predator. There is a wonder in the operations of nature that can't be denied, even when we're the losers.
Richard Preston / Writer
Denied
Frightening
Operations
Predator
Viruses
Forms
Losers
Immensely
Inherently
Life Forms
Profoundly
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In the course of writing 'First Light,' I climbed all over and through the Hale Telescope, where I found rooms, stairways, tunnels, and abandoned machines leaking oil. My notebooks show tooth-marks where I gripped them with my teeth while climbing around inside the telescope, and the notebooks are stained with Flying Horse telescope oil.
Richard Preston / Writer
Abandoned
Climbing
Flying
Horse
Machines
Oil
Rooms
Teeth
Inside
Climbed
Leaking
Notebooks
Stained
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The dragonfly is an exceptionally beautiful insect and a fierce carnivore. It has four wings that beat independently. This gives it an ability to maneuver in the air with superb dexterity. A dragonfly can put on a burst of speed, stop on a dime, hover, fly backward, and switch direction in a flash. This is a hunting behavior known as hawking.
Richard Preston / Writer
Ability
Air
Behavior
Flash
Four
Hunting
Speed
Superb
Wings
Backward
Beat
Burst
Dime
Direction
Dragonfly
Exceptionally
Fly
Gives
Hawking
Hover
Independently
Insect
Maneuver
Put
Stop
Switch
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Occasionally they came to villages, and at each village they encountered a roadblock of fallen trees. Having had centuries of experience with the smallpox virus, the village elders had instituted their own methods for controlling the virus, according to their received wisdom, which was to cut their villages off from the world, to protect their people from a raging plague. It was reverse quarantine, an ancient practice in Africa, where a village bars itself from strangers during a time of disease, and drives away outsiders who appear. (94)
Richard Preston / Writer
Cutting
People
Practice
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Richard Preston Quotes - Page 2

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