The Anthropocene Reviewed

he’d say . . . ‘In this world, you must be oh so smart, or oh so pleasant

Thanks for visiting the Orlando Science Center. The exit is to your left.

Helen Keller wrote that smell is “a potent wizard that transports us across a thousand miles and all the years we have lived.”

History, like human life, is at once incredibly fast and agonizingly slow.

We’re the only part of the known universe that knows it’s in a universe.

Never predict the end of the world. You’re almost certain to be

wrong, and if you’re right, no one will be around to congratulate you

Even now I’m structuring this introduction like a maze, coming back to places I thought I’d left.

The writer Allegra Goodman was once asked, “Whom would you like to write your life story?” She answered, “I seem to be writing it myself, but since I’m a novelist, it’s all in code.”

There was so much news—news that was forever breaking—that there was never time for context.