In the course of writing ‘First Light,’ I climbed all over and through the Hale Telescope, where I found rooms, stairways, tunnels, and abandoned machines leaking oil. My notebooks show tooth-marks where I gripped them with my teeth while climbing around inside the telescope, and the notebooks are stained with Flying Horse telescope oil. Richard Preston Read Quote
There may be a little bit of finger-pointing – there always is in a situation like this – but I think of Ebola as an act of nature. It’s the biological equivalent of a tsunami, and yes, we are having trouble handling it. Richard Preston Read Quote
Redwood rainforest has five to 10 times the biomass – that’s the sheer weight of living material – of, say, deep tropical rainforest in the Amazon basin. Richard Preston Read Quote
Redwoods flourish in fog, but they don’t like salt air. They tend to appear in valleys that are just out of sight of the sea. In their relationship with the sea, redwoods are like cats that long to be stroked but are shy to the touch. Richard Preston Read Quote
I think we sometimes give ourselves a little too much credit as humans, as being able to control and understand nature, when in fact we do neither. Richard Preston Read Quote
As life forms, viruses are just inherently interesting. It’s the microworld – this universe of life too small for us to see – but it’s profoundly complicated, and immensely powerful. Ebola is like a beautiful and frightening predator. There is a wonder in the operations of nature that can’t be denied, even when we’re the losers. Richard Preston Read Quote
If you want to survive Ebola, you need to be young. If you’re in your late 30s, the death rate is about 80 percent, and if you’re over 45, then the death rate goes up to about 90 percent. Richard Preston Read Quote
What the experts are telling me is that there’s very little chance that Ebola is going to mutate into something that could spread directly through the air. The real concern is not whether Ebola could go airborne, but whether it could spread faster. Richard Preston Read Quote
Here’s what’s terrifying about Ebola. Ebola is invisible. It’s a monster without a face. With the science that we have now, we can perceive Ebola as being not one thing but as a swarm, and the swarm is moving through the human population and expanding its numbers. It has the qualities of a monster. Richard Preston Read Quote
