Quotes from Michael Crichton

Inside, Tim saw a small room bathed in green light. Four technicians in lab coats were peering into double-barreled stereo microscopes, or looking at images on high resolution video screens. The room was filled with yellow stones. The stones were in glass shelves; in cardboard boxes; in large pull-out trays. Each stone was tagged and numbered in black ink.

We stand out, we strike out, we do our own thing, go our own way. The herd of independent minds, somebody called it.

You got cell phones, you got computers, you got antibiotics, medicines, hospitals. And you say the old ways are better?

What phenomenon is that?" "Gender transition," Grant said. "Actually, it's just plain changing sex." Grant explained that a number of plants and animals were known to have the ability to change their sex during life—orchids, some fish and shrimp, and now frogs. Frogs that had been observed to lay eggs were able to change, over a period of months, into complete males.

Like a bearded nut in robes on the sidewalk proclaiming the end of the world is near, the media is just doing what makes it feel good, not reporting hard facts. We need to start seeing the media as a bearded nut on the sidewalk, shouting out false fears. It's not sensible to listen to it.

Actually, dinosaur DNA is somewhat easier to extract by this process than mammalian DNA. The reason is that mammalian red cells have no nuclei, and thus no DNA in their red cells. To clone a mammal, you must find a white cell, which is much rarer than red cells. But dinosaurs had nucleated red cells, as do modern birds. It is one of the many indications we have that dinosaurs aren't really reptiles at all. They are big leathery birds.

Then there is the speculative work of anthropologists like Helen Fisher, who claim to tell us about the origins of love or of infidelity or cooperation by reference to other societies, animal behavior, and the fossil record. How can she be wrong? These are untestable, unprovable stories.

If they were all concerned, why didn't they do something about it? But of course that's human nature. Nobody does anything until it's too late. We put the stoplight at the intersection after the kid is killed

refurbished warehouse district below London's

Extinction was simply proof of failure to adapt

Even though speculation is correct only by chance, which means it is wrong at least 50% of the time, nobody remembers and therefore nobody cares. People do not remember yesterday, let alone last week, or last month. Media exists in the eternal now, this minute, this crisis, this talking head, this column, this speculation.

Of course the auto companies discarded it-it's a good idea. Don't want any good ideas coming out of a big company. Might lead to a good product!

Expertise is no shield against failure to see ahead. Paul Erlich, a brilliant academic who has devoted his entire life to ecological issues, has been wrong in nearly all his major predictions. He was wrong about diminishing resources, he was wrong about the population explosion, and he was wrong that we would lose 50% of all species by the year 2000. His lifelong study of these issues did not prevent him from being wrong.

life is wonderful. its a gift to be alive, to see the sun and breathe the air.

La vida es demasiado corta y el ADN demasiado largo.

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect works as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.

Would you make products to help mankind, to fight illness and disease? Dear me, no. That's a terrible idea. A very poor use of technology. - John Hammond

Personally I would never help mankind. -John Hammond

You know what's wrong with scientific power? It's a form of inherited wealth. And you know what assholes congenially rich people are.

At very small, subatomic dimensions, the structure of space-time is irregular. It's not smooth, it's sort of bubbly and foamy. And because it's way down at the quantum level, it's called quantum foam.

If we are gone tomorrow the Earth will not miss us.

He had a term for people like this: temporal provincials—people who were ignorant of the past, and proud of it. Temporal provincials were convinced that the present was the only time that mattered, and that anything that had occurred earlier could be safely ignored.

No te preocupes -dijo Sarah-. Ya pensaremos en algo. -Siempre contestas lo mismo -observó Kelly. -Porque siempre es la verdad -repuso Sarah

They didn't understand what they were doing. I'm afraid that will be on the tombstone of the human race.