It’s one of the worst-kept secrets of family life that all parents have a preferred son or daughter, and the rules for acknowledging it are the same everywhere: The favored kids recognize their status and keep quiet about it – the better to preserve the good thing they’ve got going and to keep their siblings off their back. Jeffrey Kluger Read Quote
My family went through divorces and remarriages and the later, blended home – and then watched that home explode, too. Jeffrey Kluger Read Quote
You do not want to talk to me on the phone. How do I know? Because I don’t want to talk to you on the phone. Nothing personal, I just can’t stand the thing. I find it intrusive and somehow presumptuous. It sounds off insolently whenever it chooses and expects me to drop whatever I’m doing and, well, engage. With others! Jeffrey Kluger Read Quote
A mere ape in our world may be a scholar in its own, and the low life of any beast may be a source of deep satisfaction for the beast itself. Jeffrey Kluger Read Quote
A cockroach likely has no less brainpower than a butterfly, but we’re quicker to deny it consciousness because it’s a species we dislike. Jeffrey Kluger Read Quote
There are a lot of obstacles in the way of our understanding animal intelligence – not the least being that we can’t even agree whether nonhuman species are conscious. We accept that chimps and dolphins experience awareness; we like to think dogs and cats do. But what about mice and newts? What about a fly? Is anything going on there at all? Jeffrey Kluger Read Quote
Humans have a fraught relationship with beasts. They are our companions and our chattel, our family members and our laborers, our household pets and our household pests. We love them and cage them, admire them and abuse them. And, of course, we cook and eat them. Jeffrey Kluger Read Quote
The best thing about science is that hard, empirical answers are always there if you look hard enough. The best thing about religion is that the very absence of that certainty is what requires – and gives rise to – deep feelings of faith. Jeffrey Kluger Read Quote
There’s a sort of sibling moratorium when you’re establishing yourself as an adult. So much of your energy has to be focused on other things like work and kids. But when people become more settled, siblings tend to regroup because now you’re building a new extended family. Jeffrey Kluger Read Quote
Sisters have ways of socializing brothers into the mysteries of girls. Brothers have ways of socializing sisters into the puzzle that is boys. Jeffrey Kluger Read Quote
