Natural DNA is a tractless coil, like an unwound and tangled audiotape on the floor of the car in the dark.

I like writing about biology, not doing it.

Science grows like a weed every year.

My mother often mailed me articles from 'Reader's Digest' about advances in DNA chemistry. No matter how I tried to explain it to her, she never grasped the concept that I could have been writing those articles, that something I had invented made most of those DNA discoveries possible.

Sometimes in the morning, when it's a good surf, I go out there, and I don't feel like it's a bad world.

My grandfather milked several cows twice a day and supplied the neighbours with dairy products. He liked to go visiting around the county on Saturdays, and he also enjoyed the neighbours when they came by once a week with their empty milk jars. He walked them out to their cars and hung over the driver's side window until they drove off.