Alex Shoumatoff
Alex Shoumatoff

The usual way of growing cotton is highly petrochemical-intensive, requiring 110 pounds of nitrogen fertilizer per acre. Some of the fertilizer is broken down by soil bacteria into nitrate, a toxic and highly soluble chemical that can leach into groundwater or get washed into lakes, creating oxygenless dead zones.

Alex Shoumatoff
Alex Shoumatoff

Elephants are highly emotional. Whatever they are feeling, they let it out immediately, and the histrionics are over and forgotten in a moment, lasting no longer than the cloud formations that are constantly coming apart and re-forming overhead. There is no guile in pachyderms.

Alexandra Petri
Alexandra Petri

You can be brilliant in some ways and despicable in others. You can be a clean, upright, moral individual in your private life who never swears, treats women with respect, and speaks highly of duty and honor - and go out every day and dedicate yourself to a cause that makes the world worse.

Alexei Sayle
Alexei Sayle

I'm sure a psychologist would see something highly significant in how absent-minded I am. I mean I'd forget my head if it wasn't attached to my neck by muscles, ligaments and my esophagus.

Alison Gopnik
Alison Gopnik

The brain is highly structured, but it is also extremely flexible. It's not a blank slate, but it isn't written in stone, either.

Alison Gopnik
Alison Gopnik

Animals are certainly more sophisticated than we used to think. And we shouldn't lump together animals as a group. Crows and chimps and dogs are all highly intelligent in very different ways.

Alissa Quart
Alissa Quart

Making a movie, under any circumstances, is a highly stressful occupation.

Allan Guthrie
Allan Guthrie

A number of people have read 'Two-Way Split' and made certain assumptions about what the author's like, and I'm highly disappointing to them. I don't drink, I don't eat meat; that's very disappointing for a hard-boiled writer.

Chris Fussell
Chris Fussell

Special operations are small, highly specialized. They do amazing work when they're put into the fight, but it's a limited resource. And so if we become overly dependent on an organization that's designed for a very specific mission and expect them to solve all problems around the world, you're naturally going to overextend it.

Chris Fussell
Chris Fussell

The 20th century was all about hierarchies: if you want to create something, if you want to start a country, create a product, whatever it is. Your goal is to create a highly efficient hierarchical model, scale it, because that's what the competition's doing.