“Nutrition science is where surgery was in about 1650, you know, really interesting and promising, but would you want to have them operate on you yet? I don’t think so.”

— Michael Pollan

[In Defense of Food: Author, Journalist Michael Pollan on Nutrition, Food Science and the American Diet, 2008-02-13, Democracy Now!, http://www.democracynow.org/2008/2/13/in_defense_of_food_author_journalist, 2009-04-15]

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Michael Pollan 37

American author, journalist, activist, and professor of jou… 1955

Ellsworth Wareham (1914–2018)

Interview with CNN's chief medicine reporter Sanjay Gupta (April 2015) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGQTpxjbwaM.

“I don’t think it would actually make you happier to be told you were right about this,” he said finally.
“I don’t want to be happy,” Dahl said. “I just want to know.”

John Scalzi book Redshirts

Source: Redshirts (2012), Chapter 23 (p. 229)

“Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.”

Ella Fitzgerald (1917–1996) American jazz singer

“The message of the summoned life is that you don’t need to panic if you don’t yet know what you want to do with your life. But you probably want to throw yourselves into circumstances where the summons will come.”

David Brooks (1961) American journalist, commentator and editor

2010s
Source: [David, Brooks, http://graduationwisdom.com/speeches/0088-brooks.htm, Commencement Address, May 14, 2011]

“This is a bad story.”
“Sorry. I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have told you.”
“No, you should,” I say.
“But—”
“I don’t want there to be bad stories and me not know them.”

Emma Donoghue Room

Source: Room

“I don’t think John Edwards knows what the heck he is talking about. John Edwards wants you and all the Democrats to think, ‘I want us out of there,’ but when you come back and you say, ‘O. K., John. What about the chaos that will ensue? Do we have any interest, John, left in the region?’ Well, John will have to answer yes or no. If he says yes, what are they? What are those interests, John? How do you protect those interests, John, if you are completely withdrawn? Are you withdrawn from the region, John? Are you withdrawn from Iraq, John? In what period? So all this stuff is like so much Fluffernutter out there. So for me, what I think you have to do is have a strategic notion. And they may have it—they are just smart enough not to enunciate it.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Speaking on Edwards' position for immediate withdrawal of about 40,000 American troops from Iraq (February 5, 2007), reported in the New York Observer http://www.observer.com/20070205/20070205_Jason_Horowitz_pageone_newsstory1-2.html
2000s

“I don’t want to frighten you, but I would like to make you understand the import of what you think of attempting. You must not become a mere peddler of words. The thing to learn is to know what people are thinking about, not what they say.”

Sherwood Anderson book Winesburg, Ohio

"The Teacher"
Winesburg, Ohio (1919)
Context: "You will have to know life," she declared, and her voice trembled with earnestness. She took hold of George Willard’s shoulders and turned him about so that she could look into his eyes. A passer-by might have thought them about to embrace. "If you are to become a writer you’ll have to stop fooling with words," she explained. "It would be better to give up the notion of writing until you are better prepared. Now it’s time to be living. I don’t want to frighten you, but I would like to make you understand the import of what you think of attempting. You must not become a mere peddler of words. The thing to learn is to know what people are thinking about, not what they say."

“Don't you think it would be wonderful to get rid of everything and everybody and just go someplace where you don't know a soul? Sometimes I feel like doing that. I really really want to do it sometimes.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

“That’s all I think about these days. Must be because I have so much time to kill every day. When you don’t have anything to do, your thoughts get really, really far out-so far out
you can’t follow them all the way to the end.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

“When I read a book, I want you to be reading it at the same time. I want to know what would Amelia think of it. I want you to be mine. I can promise you books and conversation and all my heart, Amy.”

Gabrielle Zevin (1977) American writer

Source: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

“Nutrition science is where surgery was in about 1650, you know, really interesting and promising, but would you want to have them operate on you yet? I don’t think so.”

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