A Quote by Ellen Stofan

I always like to say just think you were a doctor with only one patient. You might understand how that person gets sick, how they get better, but you understand nothing about the progression of disease or how humans in general get ill. Now take an Earth scientist: you only have one planet to study.
I think the only thing that I really thought about, I am always every year thinking about how I can get better, how my stuff can get better, how our team can improve.
I say the sweet science is to understand not only how to fight coming forward, how to be a big puncher, but also understand, if you run into a guy who can take your punch for the first time, how to react.
I have a friend who's an artist, and he sometimes takes a view which I don't agree with. He'll hold up a flower and say, "Look how beautiful it is," and I'll agree. But then he'll say, "I, as an artist, can see how beautiful a flower is. But you, as a scientist, take it all apart and it becomes dull." I think he's kind of nutty. [...] There are all kinds of interesting questions that come from a knowledge of science, which only adds to the excitement and mystery and awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts.
If we want to know how the Earth's biosphere is going to respond to the things that humans are doing to the planet right now, the only evidence that we have is how biotic systems have responded in the past.
I think everyone is always asking themselves, How is my work meaningful, how is my life meaningful? As I get older, I feel like who I am as a person and a citizen is more important than who I am in my work. But I do think it reframed slightly for me, how much I have to care about a project in order to want to do it. Sometimes, obviously, you have a take a job for money. But I think I'm quicker now when I get a script that's, say, borderline misogynist, I'm not going to go in for it. I'm thinking more about what I'm putting into the world.
I am happy to be patient zero. It is for the world, for the sick children and sick old people. My life has been good. I understand the risks but I research how people die and I am happy to say that today I do not know how I will die now. Tomorrow or in the long future I was up for a change.
Whenever I'm trying to understand people that I don't understand, or things in people or even in myself, I'll say, 'When did this negativity get here?' I try to think back to how I was raised to deal with things, and then consider how the person that I'm dealing with grew up.
You know, I think when I was young, I was just always worried about how I was going to fit in, what I needed to do to be better. I think now, as you get older, you kind of think more as a team concept of, 'How do I get everyone on the same page?'
There's an Inuit myth about the origin of the human race. There were two brothers, and the younger brother eventually gets changed into a woman. And that's how humans reproduced. And I thought, 'How could I really understand that?'
If a man could understand all the horror of the lives of ordinary people who are turning around in a circle of insignificant interests and insignificant aims, if he could understand what they are losing, he would understand that there can only be one thing that is serious for him - to escape from the general law, to be free. What can be serious for a man in prison who is condemned to death? Only one thing: How to save himself, how to escape: nothing else is serious.
Sometimes I'll read a script and think, "That's not how humans behave," or "I don't understand how to do that and make it seem like I'm not some kind of strange alien or on a sitcom." I don't get it, and when I feel that way, I have to listen to my instinct.
My father was a scientist and his colleagues were into pathology and microbiology, and study of viruses and how it spreads and mutates, so I understand the beauty with which nature works and more beautifully how our immune systems work.
The players start to recognise your game, start to know how you move, how you pass, how you shoot and the things become difficult now. So now I need to improve more and to work more and understand more the teams who I play against because they will understand me better, but I need to be prepared to understand better the difficulties they can have.
Why shouldn't the death of a person you love bring you into lurid ruin? You don't know how to love the one you love until they disappear abruptly. Then you understand how thinly distanced from their suffering, how sparing of self you often were, only rarely unguarded of heart, working your networks of give-and-take.
We can use the romantic relationship as a microcosmic example. Until you really understand the other person and where they're coming from and you understand yourself and how you contribute to things, you can never make that relationship better. And I think sometimes people don't understand how much these things are related.
I guess most of us would rather not discuss cancer because we are all afraid we might be told we have it. It's hard for people to even say the word, and that's the first obstacle you have to overcome when you are diagnosed with the disease. I think once you understand a little more about it ... I don't mean it gets any easier ... but I think you give it more in-depth thought about how you're going to deal with it.
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