“The potent vasodilator effect of CO2 is demonstrated by the finding that in humans 5% CO2 inhalation causes an increase in cerebral blood flow by 50% and 7% CO2 inhalation causes a 100% increase in cerebral blood flow.”

“‘Don Juan examined me with curiosity and laughed. He said in a very kind tone that he had already told me that all of us were fools. I was not an exception.

“‘You always feel compelled to explain your acts, as if you were the only man on earth who’s wrong,’ he said. ‘It’s your old feeling of importance. You have too much of it; you also have too much personal history. On the other hand, you don’t assume responsibility for your acts; you’re not using your death as an adviser, and above all, you are too accessible. In other words, your life is as messy as before I met you.’”

“If they get yellow or brown, brush ‘em. How many times would you wax a car? Once every three months!”

“It’s worth noting that high-fructose corn syrup was rapidly incorporated into food processing in the 1980s not just for its cheapness, but because of its capacity to prolong shelf life.”

“Sugar was the industry that elevated old New York, helping transform it into a cosmopolitan, powerful financial center in the 1700s. By the mid-nineteenth century, refineries on the Brooklyn waterfront were processing most of the sugar in the country. New York sugar fortunes were invested in gaslight, cable lines, railroads, and distant colonial empires. Local banks — including one that would become Citibank — emerged to support the new wealth. All of this prosperity depended on plants grown and harvested far away, first by slaves, then by their underpaid descendants. Eventually, New York’s sugar lust helped reshape islands including Puerto Rico, and the failures of the sugar crop helped drive those islanders to New York, following the path that sugar had laid for them.”