Lab Girl

Now you ask a question about your leaf.

Guess what? You are now a scientist. People will tell you that you have to know math to be a scientist, or physics or chemistry. They’re wrong. That’s like saying you have to know how to knit to be a housewife, or that you have to know Latin to study the Bible.

There are about as many leaves on one tree as there are hairs on your head. It’s really impressive.

Can you imagine growing up in a culture where you can never ask anyone anything about themselves? Where “How are you?” is considered a personal question that one is not obligated to answer? Where you are trained to always wait for others to first mention what is troubling them, even as you are trained to never mention what is troubling you? It must be a survival skill left over from the old Viking days, when long silences were required to prevent unnecessary homicides during the long, dark winters when quarters were close and supplies were dwindling

While I was a child, I assumed that the whole world acted like we did, and so it confused me when I moved out of state and met people who effortlessly gave each other the simple warmth and casual affection that I had craved for so long. I then had to learn to live in a world where when people don’t talk to each other, it is because they don’t know each other, not because they do

­ING in the world more perfect than a slide rule

I need to watch plants grow and make them die. I need the answers that can come only from control; he prefers to set the world in motion and then watch it flow.

I was stunned to find that the ultimate proof of love for me was nothing heroic, but an easy and superfluous gesture performed just to make me smile. The love that I had to give someone had been packed too tightly and too long in a small box, and so it all tumbled out when opened. And there was more where that came from.

Each beginning is the end of a waiting. We are each given exactly one chance to be. Each of us is both impossible and inevitable. Every replete tree was first a seed that waited.

being able to derive happiness from discovery is a recipe for a beautiful life