“I tell you, Professor, growing up is a full contact sport. Somewhere in our brains, foolishness and naïveté join forces with a false sense of invincibility. Together, they score own-goals against their host’s interests. All this happens while that referee known as ‘reason’ is collapsed in a drunken stupor, unable to stop the madness. When he finally wakes up, all he can do is grant the useless penalty known as ‘hindsight’. But the outcome remains unchanged. The game is lost …”

“When a group of people are forced to navigate a minefield together, everyone feels a grudging sense of comfort when someone else gets blown up. Though there may be other unseen landmines left in the ground, each death creates a safe spot. A landmine cannot explode twice in the same place. Sure, the explosion robs the survivors of a comrade. Still, each death makes everyone’s next step marginally safer. So everyone keeps walking with grief on their faces, and relief in their hearts. Their own deaths are further postponed by the end of another life.”

“The primitive craving for survival is universal in all things capable of dying. Now imagine if you could isolate the basic element that drives all animals to fight for survival? What would you do with it? I already had my own ideas when I started my search for an entity I eventually dubbed “The Determination Gene”.”

“Further north, I met a Siberian hermit who lived in the foothills of the Ural Mountains. His life’s passion was wrestling black bears ... in the nude (him not the bears). He did not know why he did it. All the hermit knew was that if he stopped wrestling bears, he would die.”

“Professor Khupe rubbed his hand along the sand dunes of her windswept form. The static charge made her skin feel like the surface of a cactus. He recoiled. How he wished he had gone into the priesthood when he had had the chance. Embracing celibacy was far easier than battling the consequences of shunning it.”

“As he was about to press the button to shut the doors, a young woman stepped in. She had that sort of beauty that deserved to be prosecuted for appearing without notice. Professor Khupe was confident that an appropriate law existed for such a purpose. However, no prosecutor could remain undistracted for long enough to find the said law in the criminal code. The young lady would enjoy a life of impunity.”

“Not all diseases come from bacteria and viruses, Professor. The worst often come from things you cannot see under a microscope. This plant is infested with an aggressive strain of such invisible germs.”