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

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“Humans in space suits make monkeys nervous.”

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