Mike Segar / Reuters
Editor’s Note: This article previously appeared in a different format as part of The Atlantic’s Notes section, retired in 2021.

“There are very few sites where these birds go, and hardly any of our birds turned up at the other places. We really think they died,”—Jan van Gils, a Dutch researcher, on the diminishing populations of shorebirds known as red knots.

“We’re making a thing that will probably never be looked at. We could print a whole bunch of nothing and nobody would know,”Craig Mod, on building a massive digital archive.

When your sex drive comes back, it’s like being in high school. I don’t know how it’s going to work. I don’t know what’s going to happen,”Timothy Brown, a former staff sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps who received reconstructive surgery on his injured groin.

(Previous quotes from our sources here)