“I wanted to be studying plant growth, but science for war will always pay better than science for knowledge.”
― Hope Jahren, Lab Girl
“Our world is falling apart quietly. Human civilization has reduced the plant, a four-million-year-old life form, into three things: food, medicine, and wood. In our relentless and ever-intensifying obsession with obtaining a higher volume, potency, and variety of these three things, we have devastated plant ecology to an extent that millions of years of natural disaster could not. Roads have grow like a manic fungus and the endless miles of ditches that bracket these roads serve as hasty graves for perhaps millions of plant species extinguished in the name of progress. Planet Earth is nearly a Dr. Seuss book made real: every year since 1990 we have created more than eight billion new stumps. If we continue to fell healthy trees at this rate, less then six hundred years from now, every tree on the planet will have been reduced to a stump. My job is about making sure there will be some evidence that someone cared about the great tragedy that unfolded during our age.”
― Hope Jahren, Lab Girl
“I have learned that raising a child is essentially one long, slow agony of letting go.”
― Hope Jahren, Lab Girl
“I sat directly in front of him, held my head up, and watched. I watched him, as a clear-eyed witness of what he was doing and of what he was, of all of it. There at the end of the world, he danced in the broad and endless daylight, and I accepted him for what he was, instead of for what he wished he could be. The potency of my acceptance made me wonder, just a little, if I could turn it inward and accept myself. I didn’t know, but I promised myself that I would figure it out on another day. Today was already taken. Today was for watching a great man dance in the snow.”
― Hope Jahren, Lab Girl
“Oh, I'm not worried about him,' returned Bill. 'He's gone. It's not any more complicated than that. Honestly, if I admit it, it's me that I feel bad for.' He walked away from me and looked out toward the south. 'There's nothing like having a parent die to make you realize how alone you are in the world,' he added.”
― Hope Jahren, Lab Girl
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