“Sophisticated human beings were on hand to see this volcano's convulsions, they were able to investigate the event, and they were able to attempt to understand the processes that had caused such dreadful violence...their observations, painstaking and precise as science… — Simon Winchester Copy Share Image
“The very name Impressionism is taken from an Atlantic Ocean painting - that of Monet, of sunrise in the harbor of Le Havre, done… — Simon winchester Copy Share Image
My wife is very interested in fashion. I am absolutely not. I couldn't give a toss. Fashion is a perfectly valid thing to be… — Simon Winchester Copy Share Image
“or of oats (“ a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people”),” — Simon Winchester Copy Share Image
To be perfectly honest the old habits, specifically deadlines, still very much inform what I do. I am brutally disciplined about getting manuscripts in… — Simon Winchester Copy Share Image
I do as much bookish research as I can but when I sit down to write, often I think, 'Wait, I was there.' That… — Simon Winchester Copy Share Image
We should all live in central or southwest Queensland in Australia, which is geologically stable. Or Kansas or Nebraska, because it's relatively geologically stable.… — Simon Winchester Copy Share Image
“The scientific world of the time was in the midst of a terrible ferment, with discoveries and realizations coming at an unseemly rate. To… — Simon Winchester Copy Share Image
The nature of catastrophe is, after all, reasonably unvarying in the way it ruins, destroys, wounds and devastates. But if something can be learned… — Simon Winchester Copy Share Image
“and his youngest sister, Henrietta, lived to a great age, also beside the sea, with a vast collection of cats—having previously traveled around England… — Simon Winchester Copy Share Image
I find the science behind major natural events almost more interesting than the way in which those same events wreak their effects on human… — Simon Winchester Copy Share Image
The most difficult task for anyone wandering through a foreign land with the hope of gaining some insight into it is the profound need… — Simon Winchester Copy Share Image
“The cities of the eastern American fall line are well known today—Baltimore, Washington, Richmond, Fredericksburg, Philadelphia—even though the part that the very similar accidents… — Simon Winchester Copy Share Image
So research is a terribly imperfect science, and you learn an awful lot more after you've published a book, because people keep writing to… — Simon Winchester Copy Share Image
Nature is not evil. The world occasionally shrugs its shoulders, and people get knocked off. The earth, for geological reasons that are well known,… — Simon Winchester Copy Share Image
