"While looking at the graph, I thought about how I now knew something for certain that only an hour ago had been an absolutely unknown, and I slowly began to appreciate how my life had just changed. I was the only person in an infinite exploding universe who knew that the powder was made of opal. In a wide, wide world, full of unimaginable numbers of people, I was - in addition to being small and insufficient - special. I was not only a quirky bundle of genes, but I was also unique existentially, because of the tiny detail that I knew about Creation, because of what I had seen and then understood. Until I phoned someone, the concrete knowledge that opal was the mineral that fortified each seed on each hackberry tree was mine alone. Whether or not this was something worth knowing seemed another problem for another day. I stood and absorbed this revelation as my life turned a page, and my first scientific discovery shone, as even the cheapest plastic toy does when it is new.""I had worked and waited for this day. In solving this mystery I had also proved something, at least to myself, and I finally knew what real research would feel like."
"Afterward I reward myself by sitting in my office choosing and ordering chemicals and equipment, feeling like a giddy bride picking out her gift registry"
"As research scientists, we will never ever be secure."
"He knows about the many nextstory.doc files in my hard drive; He knows how I like to sift through the thesaurus for hours; he knows that nothing feels better to me than finding the exactly right word that stabs cleanly at the heart of what you are trying to say."
