“In biology, nothing is clear, everything is too complicated, everything is a mess, and just when you think you understand something, you peel off a layer and find deeper complications beneath. Nature is anything but simple.”

“To mess around with Ebola is an easy way to die. Better to work with something safer, such as anthrax.”

“It showed a kind of obscenity you see only in nature, an obscenity so extreme that it dissolves imperceptibly into beauty.”

“When people asked him why he didn't work with those viruses, he replied, I don't particularly feel like dying.”

“You know how you let yourself think that everything will be all right if you can only get to a certain place or do a certain thing. But when you get there you find it's not that simple.”

“During climbs into taller trees, I was occasionally able to look down on the backs of birds, which shine with reflected sunlight as they move through the green depths of the canopy, like schools of fish.”

“The best way to know what's in the soup, is to boil yourself in it.”