Geology is probably the most frustrating of all professions for the young man . Men's innate creative ability reaches its full development during their twenties and thirties. Those are years of greatest achievement in many of the sciences and arts, but rarely in geology. The geologist must apply all the basic sciences to empirical observations which are infinite in variety.

The Flavor of Ed Owen: A Geologist Looks Back (Geology Foundation, University of Texas at Austin, 1987), p. 85