Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Jeff VanderMeer

Quote by Jeff VanderMeer

Work

Borne

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Jeff VanderMeer
Jeff VanderMeer

Jeff VanderMeer is an American writer known for his science fiction and fantasy novels. His works often explore themes of ecology, identity, and the relationship between humans and nature. Born on July 7, 1968, VanderMeer's writing career began in the 1990s. more

You May Also Like

“What I came to appreciate— what I hope to communicate here— is that measles isn't just one more childhood disease. It is the quintessential human pathogen. Measles does more than cause fever and a rash. It teaches us about ourselves— our capacity to learn, remember, and forget. It moves through crowds at astonishing speed. It has shaped and continues to shape our history. We have a vaccine to prevent measles, one that is battle-proven to be able to eliminate the disease from whole countries, even continents. However, what we've accomplished with that vaccine isn't just an example of scientific triumph, as the persistence of measles also provides evidence for our ongoing failures to reckon with poverty, inequity, racism, and the myriad legacies of colonialism.”

ScienceMedicinePublic Health
Book:Booster Shots: The Urgent Lessons of Measles and the Uncertain Future of Children's Health
Create image

“Tal vez merezca la pena indicar que en la época en que Leavitt y Cannon estaban deduciendo las propiedades fundamentales del cosmos de tenues manchas de estrellas lejanas en placas fotográficas, el astrónomo de Harvard William H. Pickering, que podía mirar cuantas veces quisiera por un telescopio de primera, estaba elaborando su 《trascendental teoría 》, según la cual, las manchas oscuras de la Luna estaban causadas por enjambres de insectos en su migración estacional.”

Science
Book:A Really Short History of Nearly Everything
Create image

“We all know about species competition, but what about cooperation and companionship? Are interactions always competition, supporting the survival of the fittest view, or can they include cooperation, suggestive of yet another evolutionary advantage? Recent thoughts on evolution suggest that cooperation in the natural world may be just as important as competition to the evolutionary process.”

ScienceCommunicationSurvival
Book:Is Anyone Listening?: What Animals Are Saying to Each Other and to Us
Create image

“You are clever man, friend John; you reason well, and your wit is bold; but you are too prejudiced. You do not let your eyes see nor your ears hear, and that which is outside your daily life is not of account to you. Do you not think that there are things which you cannot understand, and yet which are: that some people see things that others cannot? But there are things old and new which must not be contemplate by men's eyes, because they know-or think they know-some things which other men have told them. Ah, it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all; and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain. But yet we see around us every day the growth of new beliefs, which think themselves new, and which are yet but the old, which pretend to be young-like the fine ladies at the opera. I sup-pose now you do not believe in corporeal transference. No? Nor in materialization. No? Nor in astral bodies. No? Nor in the reading of thought. No? Nor in hypnotism-' 'Yes,' I said. 'Charcot has proved that pretty well.' He smiled as he went on: 'Then you are satisfied as to it. Yes? And of course then you understand how it act, and can follow the mind of the great Charcot-alas that he is no more!-into the very soul of the patient that he influence. No? Then, friend John, am I to take it that you simply accept fact, and are satisfied to let from premise to conclusion be a blank? No? Then tell me for I am stu-dent of the brain-how you accept the hypnotism and reject the thought-reading. Let me tell you, my friend, that there are things done to-day in electrical science which would have been deemed unholy by the very men who discovered electricity-who would themselves not so long before have been burned as wizards. There are always mysteries in life. Why was it that Methuselah lived nine hundred years, and "Old Parr" one hundred and sixty-nine, and yet that poor Lucy, with four men's blood in her poor veins, could not live even one day! For, had she lived one more day, we could have save her. Do you know all the mystery of life and death? Do you know the altogether of comparative anatomy, and can say wherefore the qualities of brutes are in some men, and not in others? Can you tell me why, when other spiders die small and soon, that one great spider lived for centuries in the tower of the old Spanish church and grew and grew, till, on descending, he could drink the oil of all the church lamps? Can you tell me why in the Pampas, ay and elsewhere, there are bats that come at night and open the veins of cattle and horses and suck dry their veins; how in some islands of the Western seas there are bats which hang on the trees all day, that those who have seen describe as like giant nuts or pods, and that when the sailors sleep on the deck, because that it is hot, flit down on them, and then and then in the morning are found dead men, white as even Miss Lucy was?”

SciencePhylosophy
Book:Dracula
Create image