David Quammen
David Quammen
David Quammenis an American science, nature and travel writer and the author of fifteen books, five of them fiction. He wrote a column, called "Natural Acts" for Outside magazine for fifteen years. His articles have also appeared in National Geographic, Harper's, Rolling Stone, the New York Times Book Review and other periodicals. In 2013, Quammen's book Spillover was shortlisted for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
CountryUnited States of America
people lions sacred
Kill off the sacred bear. Kill off the ancestral crocodile. Kill off the myth-wrapped tiger. Kill off the lion. You haven't conquered a people, or their place, until you've exterminated their resident monsters.
book comforting intellectual
Of course anyone who truly loves books buys more of them than he or she can hope to read in one fleeting lifetime. A good book, resting unopened in its slot on a shelf, full of majestic potentiality, is the most comforting sort of intellectual wallpaper.
african carry central contain dangerous forests including kinds places seems spent spooky time
Most Americans know nothing about the African forest, and it seems to them a very scary, spooky dangerous place. I've spent a lot of time in the forests of central Africa. I know they're beautiful places that contain a lot of different kinds of creatures, including some that carry Ebola.
hate writing character
As I started to read nonfiction in the mid '70s, I discovered, holy cow, there was a lot of imaginative nonfiction. Not the kind where people use composite characters and invented quotes. I hate that kind of nonfiction. But imaginative in the sense that good writing and unexpected structure and vivid reporting could be combined with presenting facts.
carrying
You can't take a knife on a plane anymore, but you can get on carrying a virus.
likely next spread thousands
Ebola isn't a respiratory virus. It doesn't spread through the airborne route. So it's not likely to spread like wildfire around the world and kill tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people. That's what I think of as the next big one.
world novel using-me
I wrote four novels, but then I realized that the world didn't need me to be a novelist, but the world could use me as a nonfiction writer.
childhood happy male
I'm a white, middle-class male who had a happy childhood in Ohio. The world does not need me to be a novelist.
april blond fierce gone humor iconic jane ponytail shines sly sparkle turned
On April 3, 2014, Jane Goodall turned 80. The iconic blond ponytail has gone gray, but the sparkle of intelligence, sly humor, and fierce dedication still shines from her hazel eyes.
dues paid prodigy
I was a prodigy who learned how difficult writing was only after getting published. I paid my dues later.
novel
I used to read only fiction. Now I don't read much, only occasionally, such as a Cormac McCarthy or a Jim Harrison novel.
continues death period time
One of the things that's particularly nefarious about Ebola is that it continues to live in a dead person for some period of time after death. A person who's been dead for a day or two may still be seething with Ebola virus.
cases human infection particular perhaps
The more cases of Ebola infection we have, the more chances there are for the virus to mutate in a particular way that adapts it well to living in humans, replicating in humans, and perhaps transmitting from human to human.
lying reading world
If you are lying in a tent in the Congo jungle, you don't want to be reading about rainforest biology. You want to be in a distant world.