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All A Quotes

“As the discoverer and principal excavator of Murray Springs, [...] Haynes deserves credit for drawing attention to a very curious aspect of the site--a distinct dark layer of soil draped 'like a shrink-wrap,' as Allen West puts it, over the top of the Clovis remains and of the extinct megafauna--including Eloise. Haynes has identified this 'black mat' (his term) not only at Murray Springs but at dozens of other sites across North America, and was the first to acknowledge its clear and obvious association with the Late Pleistocene Extinction Event. he speaks of the 'remarkable circumstances' surrounding the event, the abrupt die-off on a continental scale of all large mammals 'immediately before deposition of the ... black mat,' and the total absence thereafter of 'mammoth, mastodon, horse, camel, dire wold, American lion, tapir and other [megafauna], as well as Clovis people.' Haynes notes also that 'The basal black mat contact marks a major climate change from the warm dry climate of the terminal Allerod to the glacially cold Younger Dryas.' From roughly 18,000 years ago, and for several thousand years thereafter, global temperatures had been slowly but steadily rising and the ice sheets melting. Our ancestors would have had reason to hope that earth's long winter was at last coming to an end and that a new era of congenial climate beckoned. This process of warming became particularly pronounced after about 14,500 years ago. Then suddenly, around 12,800 years ago, the direction of climate change reversed and the world turned dramatically, instantly cold--as cold as it had been at the peak of the Ice Age many thousands of years earlier. This deep freeze--the mysterious epoch now known as the Younger Dryas--lasted for approximately 1,200 years until 11,600 years ago, at which point the climate flipped again, global temperatures shot up rapidly, the remnant ice sheets melted and collapsed into the oceans, and the world became as warm as it is today.”

“As the Divine Tongue, I came here not only to perform my duties as a taster... but also to meet with various authority figures and key members of the culinary industry. Someday, I will shoulder both the Nakiri family as well as Japan's culinary world. It was imperative that I be shown off so as to impress upon the right people that I was a person to be respected and followed. It was simply a business transaction, one meant to further Nakiri interests. Whenever I left the Nakiri mansion, it was always for some official business like that. Looking back on it now... I think that the young me was so used to being led around that she never tried to look at things for herself." "That can't be right. Um... as the daughter of the Mito Group... I got to officially meet with you a time or two when we were both kids. Even back then, I thought you were amazing, Miss Erina. A-as another kid from a big business family... I know what you're going through." "Mito?" "Um! N-not to imply that my family is anywhere near as important as the Nakiris! And I'd never do anything so rude and disrespectful as imply that the two of us are in any way equal! It's just... I know what it's like to be bound by family duty." I will not have the Mito family heir showing any signs of meek girliness! Listen, Ikumi. You must be strong! Think of nothing else! "But in my case, the pressure from my family got to be too much. It overwhelmed me, and, well... I kinda went off the rails until recently. You had to be under way more pressure than I ever was, Miss Erina. But you always appeared graceful and acted with dignity.”

“As the dolphin becomes just another victim of humanity's utilitarian attitudes towards the earth, it seems as though the ancient friendship between our respective species is no longer entirely reciprocal. Such exploitation is nowhere more evident than in the capture and display of cetaceans for profit. Stripped of their natural identity, deprived of their own culture and environment, the dolphin and whale incarcerated within the oceanarium not only symbolizes an abuse of that ancient relationship, but above all our estrangement from nature as a whole.”

“As the dominant social ethic changed from a religious to a secular one, the problem of heresy disappeared, and the problem of madness arose and became of great social significance. In the next chapter I shall examine the creation of social deviants, and shall show that as formerly priests had manufactured heretics, so physicians, as the new guardians of social conduct and morality, began to manufacture madmen.”

“As the dreamscape around me grows clearer, I slip further away from it. The mind is a magical thing, I’m discovering. A dreamscape is made of thought and is wider than the sky, able to grow large enough to fit not just our own world, but every possibility and impossibility beyond it. Once I quit thinking of it as being forced into the laws of physics, it’s easy to manipulate the dreamscape into anything I want. I don’t know how I know all this, no more than I understand how I know things when I dream. I just do. I throw up my hand, and a wall rises between the orange grove and me. Behind the wall, I start creating the world I need in Representative Belles’s mind.”

“As the duties of superintending the national defense and of securing the public peace against foreign or domestic violence involve a provision for casualties and dangers to which no possible limits can be assigned, the power of making that provision ought to know no other bounds than the exigencies of the nation and the resources of the community.”

“As the earth traced its annual loop around the sun and pirouettes daily on its axis, we co-travelers are subject to a host of natural cycles. We can't feel the earth's movements directly, but we see it in the oscillations of light and color, temperature and texture, that sweep through our surroundings. The blossoming of trees, the rising of the sun, the flow of the rides: these recurring events remind us of time's circular nature and create an underlying cadence of joy that we can rely on.”

“As the ego becomes strong it starts surrounding intelligence like a thick layer of darkness. Intelligence is light, ego is darkness. Intelligence is very delicate, ego is very hard. Intelligence is like a roseflower, ego is like a rock. And if you want to survive, they say - the so-called knowers - then you have to become rock-like, you have to be strong, invulnerable. You have to become a citadel, a closed citadel, so you cannot be attacked from outside. You have to become impenetrable.”

“As the emergency personnel and squad cars descended on Pier Three that bitter afternoon, the same questions bounced from radio to radio. “What is Superman doing here?” “Why had the Man of Steel taken time to recover the body of a fifty-year-old Costa Rican Newspaper Man who never had been or done anything important?” Because not a single one of us is background noise. Because when one of us disappears… Someone should notice. Every person is a star. A Life. A Heart. A Voice. And when a voice is silenced by darkness another must rise to see that justice is done. Valentin Reyes, survived by his daughter, Maribella, was buried last Saturday at a small service, attended by three.”

“As the end of the century approaches, all our culture is like the culture of flies at the beginning of winter. Having lost their agility, dreamy and demented, they turn slowly about the window in the first icy mists of morning. They give themselves a last wash and brush-up, their oscillated eyes roll, and they fall down the curtains.”

“As the excesses of 'molecular gastronomy' have slowly faded away, like the smell of a particularly pungent fart, a breath of fresh culinary air has swept across the country. I've been passionately interested in food and drink for more than 30 years and writing about it for a decade. In my experience there has never been a more exciting time to eat out in this country.”