Imaginal Cells Quotes & Sayings

Caterpillars chew their way through ecosystems leaving a path of destruction as they get fatter and fatter. When they finally fall asleep and a chrysalis forms around them, tiny new imaginal cells, as biologists call them, begin to take form within their bodies. The caterpillar's immune system fights these new cells as though they were foreign intruders, and only when they crop up in greater numbers and link themselves together are they strong enough to survive. Then the caterpillar's immune system fails and its body dissolves into a nutritive soup which the new cells recycle into their developing butterfly.

The caterpillar is a necessary stage but becomes unsustainable once its job is done. There is no point in being angry with it and there is no need to worry about defeating it. The task is to focus on building the butterfly, the success of which depends on powerful positive and creative efforts in all aspects of society and alliances built among those engaged in them. — Elisabet Sahtouris

Be careful not to become narrow-minded, or afraid of reading what is well written, quite the contrary, such writings are a source of comfort in life. — Vincent Van Gogh

My father has always broken the rules for those he loves, just as my mother has always kept them for the same reason. [...] 'We can't give you the life you want,' my father says, his eyes wet. He looks at my mother and she nods at him to continue. 'We wish we could. But we can help you have a chance to decide which life you want. — Ally Condie

Blackbeard was larger than life. He was 6'4 in 1710. He was a colossus, and like a rock star walking into a bar. He was a tremendous commander, a great leader. — Ray Stevenson

I've got Disney blood running through my veins. — John Lasseter

So what we can answer [as geneticists] is questions about biology, about biological ancestry. But to make any sense of that historically we have to contextualize it
the archaeology, the linguistic pattern, even the climatology. — Spencer Wells

How distressing to stumble on a dominant social habitus, just when one was convinced of one's own uniqueness in the matter! — Muriel Barbery

Such being the happiness of the times, that you may think as you wish, and speak as you think. — Tacitus

A lot of Viners do more relatable stuff, but I try to stay away from that. I try to maybe take a relatable situation and Bach it up. — King Bach

Maputo was much praised as a desirable destination, but it was a dreary, beat-up city of desperate people who had cowered there while war raged in the provinces for twenty-five years, destroying bridges, roads, and railways. Banks and donors and charities claimed to have had successes in Mozambique. I suspected they invented these successes to justify their existence; I saw no positive results of charitable efforts. But whenever I expressed skepticism about the economy, the unemployment, the potholes, or the petty thievery, people in Maputo said, as Africans elsewhere did, 'It was much worse before.' In many places, I knew, it was much better before. It was hard to imagine how much worse a place had to be for a broken-down city like Maputo to seem like an improvement. — Paul Theroux

She went about her business in a way that put me in mind of an old matchbook. You can scratch the head against the strip in the same way you always have but you are not going to get any kind of spark. — Tayari Jones