John McPhee Quote

With your arms spread wide... to represent all time on earth, look at one hand with its line of life. The Cambrian begins in the wrists, and the Permian extinction is at the outer end of the palm. All of the Cenozoic is in a fingerprint, and in a single stroke with a medium-grained nail file you could eradicate human history.

Basin and Range (p. 126), Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 1981