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Richard Preston Quotes
Richard Preston Quotes
Richard Preston
American
Writer
About
Down
Nature
Science
Time
You
Related authors:
Dale Carnegie
Denis Waitley
Dr. Seuss
H. L. Mencken
Napoleon Hill
Ray Bradbury
W. E. B. Du Bois
William Arthur Ward
We're creating these massive urban areas in the Third World. It's like you take the entire population of California and put it in one city. Then you remove basic sanitation and medical services, and you have a ticking biological time bomb.
Richard Preston
Time
You
World
Remove
City
Entire
Area
Take
Put
Like
Ticking
Massive
California
Time Bomb
Urban
Urban Areas
Then
Creating
Sanitation
Population
Bomb
Medical
Basic
Services
Biological
Third
Third World
I happen to love science... Scientists are all slightly mad. There is truth in the stereotype of the mad scientist. They are mad with curiosity.
Richard Preston
Love
Truth
Science
Slightly
Mad
Stereotype
Scientist
Scientists
Curiosity
Happen
To Love
What the experts are telling me is that there's very little chance that Ebola is going to mutate into something that could spread directly through the air. The real concern is not whether Ebola could go airborne, but whether it could spread faster.
Richard Preston
Me
Faster
Air
Telling
Something
Directly
Could
Through
Concern
Real
Spread
Go
Very
Going
Whether
Experts
Little
Chance
The seeds of a redwood are released from cones that are about the size of olives. The heartwood of the tree is a dark, shimmery red in color, like old claret. The wood has a lemony scent and is extremely resistant to rot.
Richard Preston
Dark
Old
Scent
Tree
Extremely
Released
Seeds
About
Color
Red
Like
Redwood
Wood
Size
Rot
Resistant
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
Heights
Tree
Other
Our
Run
Scared
Only
Somewhat
Feel
Know
Safe
Up
Forest
Closer
Afraid
Where
Children
Then
Roots
Appear
Humans
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
You
Will
Own
Biology
Extract
Our
Nutrients
Draw
Out
Touch
Could
Had
Arm
Know
Fell
Until
Got
Redwood
Falls
Off
Itself
Send
Just
Form
Apart
Then
Roots
Rotting
Portion
Fox bought the rights to the book way back when, and there was this attempt by Fox to make a movie out of 'The Hot Zone,' and it tended tragically in a Hollywood disaster involving Robert Redford and Jodie Foster and Ridley Scott. But the rights have been sitting at Fox ever since.
Richard Preston
Rights
Book
Back
Way
Out
Jodie Foster
Attempt
Bought
Hot
Since
Disaster
Robert
Involving
Robert Redford
Make
Been
Tragically
Scott
Sitting
Movie
Hollywood
Foster
Ridley Scott
Ever
Zone
Fox
It turns out, from what I hear, that roasted fruit bats are delicious.
Richard Preston
Fruit
Bats
Out
Delicious
Hear
Turns
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
Life
Beautiful
Nature
Complicated
Universe
Too
Viruses
Immensely
See
Life Forms
Small
Powerful
Like
Operations
Losers
Denied
Wonder
Frightening
Just
Predator
Forms
Interesting
Us
Inherently
Even
Profoundly
I think we sometimes give ourselves a little too much credit as humans, as being able to control and understand nature, when in fact we do neither.
Richard Preston
Nature
Sometimes
Too Much
Control
Think
Too
Ourselves
Neither
Able
Give
Fact
Understand
Being
In Fact
Little
Much
Credit
Humans
AIDS is the revenge of the rain forest.
Richard Preston
Rain
Revenge
AIDS
Forest
Redwood rainforest has five to 10 times the biomass - that's the sheer weight of living material - of, say, deep tropical rainforest in the Amazon basin.
Richard Preston
Living
Say
Tropical
Weight
Sheer
Material
Redwood
Amazon
Five
Times
Deep
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
World
Word
Random
Finished
Tree
Trees
Wild
Colleague
Out
Park
Had
Knocked
Feet
Named
House
Another
Tall
Tallest
Came
His
Michael
Just
Turned
Taylor
Explorer
Manuscript
Sudden
Found
Chris
Actually
Whatever happens to the great systems of nature will also be what happens to us.
Richard Preston
Great
Nature
Will
Whatever
Systems
Also
Happens
Us
Botanists have a tradition of never revealing the exact location of a rare plant. Contact between humans and rare plants is generally risky for the plants.
Richard Preston
Plant
Plants
Rare
Location
Exact
Risky
Generally
Never
Contact
Between
Revealing
Tradition
Humans
I don't believe in a biological apocalypse, but I think there is stormy biological weather ahead as the human population continues to grow.
Richard Preston
Weather
Believe
Think
Human
Stormy
Apocalypse
Human Population
Grow
Population
Biological
I'm all in favor of looking deeply into as much as we possibly can. I'm not afraid of knowledge... With all new technology, weapons inevitably emerge... Evil comes out of the human heart. It doesn't come out of nature.
Richard Preston
Nature
Knowledge
Technology
Heart
Evil
Looking
Human Heart
Favor
Out
Possibly
Weapons
Emerge
New
Come
Inevitably
New Technology
Human
Afraid
Much
Deeply
Global climate change has become entangled with the problem of invasive species. A warmer climate could allow some invaders to spread farther, while causing native organisms to go extinct in their traditional habitats and making room for invaders.
Richard Preston
Change
Problem
Become
Entangled
Some
Habitats
Could
Allow
Global
Making
Climate
Climate Change
Spread
Go
Traditional
Causing
Native
While
Room
Warmer
Organisms
Farther
Species
Extinct
The genome could be thought of as a kind of piano with twenty-five thousand keys. In some cases, a few keys may be out of tune, which can cause the music to sound wrong. In others, if one key goes dead the music turns into a cacophony, or the whole piano self-destructs.
Richard Preston
Music
Key
Cause
Thought
Few
Others
Keys
Out
Kind
Thousand
Some
Cases
Could
Piano
Wrong
Dead
Genome
Sound
Goes
May
Tune
Which
Turns
Whole
Twenty-Five
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
Life
You
World
Sky
Somewhere
Lose
Lost
Tree
Earth
Sight
Entirely
Given
Crown
Between
Names
Ecosystem
Also
Redwood
Scientists
Been
Undiscovered
Up
Get
Unexplored
Heaven
Which
Forms
Ground
Filled
Redwoods flourish in fog, but they don't like salt air. They tend to appear in valleys that are just out of sight of the sea. In their relationship with the sea, redwoods are like cats that long to be stroked but are shy to the touch.
Richard Preston
Relationship
Cats
Fog
Long
Salt
Air
Valleys
Sight
Out
Touch
Tend
Like
Just
Sea
Appear
Flourish
Shy
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
Time
Best
Natural
Habitat
Other
Adjust
Find
Parasite
Through
Selection
Host
Had
Hosts
New
Frequently
Jump
Quickly
Often
Moves
Process
Interest
Natural Selection
Each
Resistance
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
Science
Face
Monster
One Thing
Perceive
About
Through
Invisible
Qualities
Terrifying
Without
Expanding
Human
Being
Moving
Human Population
Population
Now
Thing
Here
Numbers
The crown of a supertall redwood has a towering, cloudy, irregular form, and the crowns of the tallest redwoods can sometimes look like the plume of exhaust from a rocket taking off.
Richard Preston
Sometimes
Crown
Crowns
Taking
Towering
Like
Look
Tallest
Exhaust
Redwood
Rocket
Off
Irregular
Form
Cloudy
Redwoods have an enormous surface area that extends upward into space because they have a propensity to do something called reiteration. A redwood is a fractal. And as they put out limbs, the limbs burst into small trees, copies of the redwood.
Richard Preston
Space
Enormous
Trees
Out
Propensity
Something
Small
Area
Put
Limbs
Because
Surface
Redwood
Upward
Burst
Copies
Initially, there were a lot of fears that Ebola could mutate to become the airborne Andromeda strain that would wipe us all out.
Richard Preston
Fears
Become
Out
Would
All-Out
Could
Wipe
Were
Lot
Strain
Us
Initially
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