There is something about a mortarboard that gives otherwise sane and normal people the overwhelming urge to burden you with advice. Some of them cannot help themselves. They were asked to do it by a committee. But one can only take so many pieces of wisdom before they all start to blur together.
I like period pieces.
Mum was ahead of the curve with healthy lunchboxes with grapes in sandwiches. There was always an apricot, raisins and pieces of apple.
Topsoil is a place of digestion. It sucks and chews things into smaller pieces. When it's hungry, it turns grey and stony; when it's thirsty, it opens thousands of cracked lips. Subsoil is more skeletal: it doesn't digest.
I much preferred Latin to Greek. I loved the language being such a pattern that you could not shift a word without the whole sentence falling to pieces.
Looking in detail at human anatomy, I’m always left with two practically irreconcilable thoughts: our bodies are wonderful, intricate masterpieces; and then - they are cobbled-together, rag-bag, sometimes clunking machines.
I know a bit about vertebrate anatomy and I’d like to think that I’d spot if a skeleton was entirely fabricated or cobbled together from existing bits and pieces.
My favourite finds are often antique pieces with a history.
I don't think many people would think I'm a designer. I behave in a different way. I'd get knocked down and cut to pieces if I went home and flounced about; this industry is known for the flounciness, but I've got my feet on the ground.
In the Soyuz, the little Russian capsule, you can actually hear the banging of the big shield, the big heat shield on the bottom, as it slowly erodes away from the heat and pieces of it fly off like sparks across your window, and it's an interesting thing to ride through, you know.
