“Moreover, regulatory bodies, like the people who comprise them, have a marked life cycle. In youth they are vigorous, aggressive, evangelistic, and even intolerant. Later they mellow, and in old age — after a matter of ten or fifteen years — they become, with some exceptions, either an arm of the industry they are regulating or senile.”

“It was like beginning life anew without the vigor and enthusiasm of youth, like learning to become left-handed in old age.”

“Anyone who claimed that old age had brought them patience was either lying or senile.”

“There is always some specific moment when we become aware that our youth is gone; but, years after, we know it was much later.”

“Peter, you're twelve years old. I'm ten. They have a word for people our age. They call us children and they treat us like mice.”

“Old age is always fifteen years older than I am.”

“To me, old age is always fifteen years older than I am.”

“Jacob and Monod not only outlined a theory of gene regulation, they also discovered the first regulators of gene transcription. These regulators come in two forms—repressors, genes that encode the regulatory proteins that shut genes off, and as later work showed, activators, genes that encode the regulatory proteins that turn genes on.”

“Some people are your family no matter when you find them, and some people are not, even if you are laid, still wet and crumpled, in their arms.”

“A Gurkha subaltern whom I met later told me that commanding a platoon of them was like leading a group of perfectly-disciplined ten-year-olds, and I believed him.”