“Beyond that horizon lie parts of the universe that are too far away. There hasn’t been enough time in the 13.8 billion year history of the universe for their light to have reached us.” - Cosmos
Illustration by Julien Pacaud
“The 2008 bank bailout cost more than has been spent on NASA since it was started in 1959.” - Chris Impey
Collage by Felipe Posada.
“We have to explore to survive. As soon as we have traces of life, if you don’t diversify your environment, if as a little bacteria you don’t jump to the next rock, you don’t give yourself the best chance to survive. Staying put means death. It is true physically, spiritually and intellectually.” - Astrobiologist Nathalie Cabrol, The SETI Institute
Photography by Linden Gledhill
I've wasted the greater part of my life looking for money. It's about 2% movie-making and 98% hustling.
— Orson Welles
Image: Warrior of the Worlds, a graphic novel series that finds the filmmaker leading a double life as he battles alien invaders, Scout Comics.
"Those writers who have gotten humanity to care about the natural world — which is the world — have done so because they themselves have moved through it with a sense of wonder, each of them an Alice making a Wonderland of Earth. " - Maria Popova in Jonathan Franzen on How to Write About Nature, with a Side of Rachel Carson and Alice in Wonderland
Artwork by Jim Woodring
“Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation.” - Mark Twain
Illustration by Juan Carlos Paz
"Rather than resorting to foxes and hedgehogs (a fox knows many things, but a hedgehog knows one big thing), I tend to think about modern scientists as either the drillers of ever-deeper holes (now the dominant route to fame) or scanners of wide horizons (now a much diminished group). I have always preferred to scan as far and as wide as my limited capabilities have allowed me to do so." ― Vaclav Smil, author of How the World Really Works.
Artwork by Jennifer Davis.
"Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it is better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring." - Marilyn Monroe
Illustration by Micheal Beyers
"No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.” - Virginia Woolf
Photo of a single blade of grass under a microscope.
“Sometimes reality is too complex. Stories give it form.” - Jean Luc Godard
Artwork by Marina González Eme
Words and images of others I find idiocyncratic, intriguing and inspirational.
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