"It is no harder to explain than a game of cards. There are aces and kings and twos and threes in any deck of cards. A lucky player is dealt a high-scoring hand, but none of his cards is unique. Elsewhere in the room are others with the same kinds of cards in their hands. But even with just thirteen kinds of cards, every hand is different and some are spectacularly better than others. Sex is merely the dealer, generating unique hands from the same monotonous deck of genetic cards shared by the whole species."

“As every bird-watcher knows, the beauty of a bird's song is inversely correlated with the colourfulness of its plumage.”

“...compare mankind with other animals that share our highly social habits: with colonial birds, monkeys and dolphins. As we shall see, the lesson they teach is that we are designed for a system of monogamy plagued by adultery.”

“Life is a Sisyphean race, run ever faster towards a finishing line that is merely the start of the next race.”

“Evolving is not a goal but a means to solving a problem.”

“People are attracted to people of high reproductive and genetic potential -the healthy, the fit and the powerful. The consequences of this fact, which goes under the name of sexual selection, are bizarre in the extreme.”

“In behavior, as in appearance, every human individual is unique.”