Alex Payne:

Startup founders love to obsess about location. Worrying about where in the world to start your company is a wonderful way to defer the terrifying prospect of working really hard on it and potentially failing.

Peter Theisinger, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena:

Our Curiosity is talking to us from the surface of Mars.

Charles Gross:

All labs are like complicated families, but each lab is complicated in its own way.

Nell Boeschenstein, on Emmylou Harris:

I read a profile of her once in which she talked about the black holes of outer space, not the soul. She told her interviewer the note that emanates from them is a deep and constant B-flat, a key she loves. She added, too, that a man who once played bass for her had synesthesia -- meaning that when he played notes, he saw colors -- and that when he played a B-flat what he saw was "very, very, very black."

Annalee Newitz:

NASA makes the whole thing look so awesome that we're willing to forgive the fact that it includes SWOOSH noises that you'd never hear in space.

Michiru Hoshino:

Oh! I feel it. I feel the cosmos!

Tom Vanderbilt:

The idea that that we, this species that first hoisted itself into the world of bipedalism nearly 4 million years ago -- for reasons that are still debated -- should now need "walking tips," have to make "walking plans" or use a "mobile app" to "discover" walking trails near us or build our "walking histories," strikes me as a world-historical tragedy.

Ali Dhux:

A man tries hard to help you find your lost camels.
He works more tirelessly than even you,
But in truth he does not want you to find them, ever.

Cormac McCarthy:

Anything that doesn't take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.