“The rather uncomfortable feeling most of us have when we're around snakes is evidence of how this ancient experience continues to influence us today. Throughout the long prehistory of our species and those that preceded it, snakes were a mortal threat. And so we learned our lesson. Others didn't, but that had a nasty habit of dying. So natural selection did its work and the rule--beware of snakes--was ultimately hardwired into every human brain. It's universal. Go anywhere on the planet, examine any culture. People are wary of snakes. Even if--as in the Arctic--there are no snakes. Our primate cousins shared our long experience and they feel the same way: Even monkeys raised in laboratories who have never seen a snake will back away at the sight of one.”

“Incidentally, I don't know how late you were planning to stay, but there is an excellent film this evening The Snake Pit. It's a wonderful comedy. I've seen it several times.”

“When you've been around a snake long enough, you learn how to crawl in the dirt.”

“For every snake, there is a ladder; for every ladder,a snake”

“Everyone on earth would never starve and forever find love and happiness, since we won, but if we’d lost, they would have gouged out our eyes and thrown us naked onto hot coals and poisonous snakes for all the cheering and hugging at the end, strangers hugging like the end of The Omega Virus when Steve Sturmine finds the antidote.”

“A snake must be treated as a snake, forgiving it every time it showed you its fangs, will not transform into a garland of flowers.”

“A Buddhist teacher once said that a poisonous snake is only poisonous when you walk toward it.”