“To date, treasure-hunters have followed up clue after clue, including a dagger-marked tree, to no avail. If there is a fortune buried in Handcart Gulch, it is still safely hidden”

“Hey boys, come up here!" Lee's excited shout bounced from rock to rock down the gulch. "I've got all of California right here in this pan!”

“He was the standard against which all others were measured.”

“It is too easy to think that ‘science’ is what happens now, that modernity and scientific thought are inseparable. Yet as Laura Snyder so brilliantly shows in this riveting picture of the first heroic age, the nineteenth century saw the invention of the computer, of electrical impulses, the harnessing of the power of steam – the birth of railways, statistics and technology. In ‘The Philosophical Breakfast Club’ she draws an endearing – almost domestic – picture of four scientific titans, and shows how – through their very ‘clubbability’ – they created the scientific basis on which the modern world stands.”

“I've buried a lot of my laundry in the back yard.”

“There seemed to be endless obstacles preventing me from living with my eyes open, but as I gradually followed up clue after clue it seemed that the root cause of them all was fear.”

“For women not to fear rape because we can successfully defend ourselves against it is not anachronistic but revolutionary. For women to be considered as potential warriors (in every sense of the word, including its physical representation) is not anachronistic but revolutionary. If realized, it might imply a radical change in modern life.”