interactions Quotes

“Water must be thought of in terms of the chains of life it supports.”

“By their very nature chemical controls are self-defeating, for they have been devised and applied without taking into account the complex biological systems against which they have been blindly hurled.”

“The history of life on earth has been a history of interaction between living things and their surroundings.”

“...interests are not discovered through introspection. Instead, interests are triggered by interactions with the outside world. The process of interest discovery can be messy, serendipitous, and inefficient. This is because you can’t really predict with certainty what will capture your attention and what won’t.”

“Just to summarize: I lurched into Rachel’s room like a zombie, freaking her out, then went for a fist pound. It is impossible to be less smooth than Greg S. Gaines.”

“One night as I was passing a tavern I saw through a lighted window some gentlemen fighting with billiard cues, and saw one of them thrown out of the window. At other times I should have felt very much disgusted, but I was in such a mood at the time, that I actually envied the gentleman thrown out of the window – and I envied him so much that I even went into the tavern and into the billiard-room. ‘Perhaps,’ I thought, ‘I’ll have a fight, too, and they’ll throw me out of the window.’ ”

“I sat awhile in perfect silence, rallying my stunned faculties. Immediately it occurred to me that my ears had deceived me, or Bartleby had entirely misunderstood my meaning. I repeated my request in the clearest tone I could assume; but in quite as clear a one came the previous reply, ‘I would prefer not to.‘”

“Immediately then the thought came sweeping across me, what miserable friendlessness and loneliness are here revealed. His poverty is great, but his solitude, how horrible! Think of it. Of a Sunday, Wall Street is deserted as Petra, and every night of every day it is an emptiness. This building, too, which of weekdays hums with industry and life, at nightfall echoes with sheer vacancy, and all through Sunday is forlorn. And here Bartleby makes his home, sole spectator of a solitude which he has seen all populous – a sort of innocent and transformed Marius brooding among the ruins of Carthage!”

“‘Nukkin ya?’ said Pickles. ‘Geez, you’re talking like one of them now.’ ‘So what,’ I said. ‘Well I s’pose he is a mate of yours and all,’ said Pickles. ‘Matter of fact, he is,’ I said.”

“The little chap began to get apprehensive. Now was his time, now was the moment to forge some sort of verbal buckler. The first that came into his head was an alexandrine: ‘And anyway who said that you could call me tu?”