"This is a book about how it happened-in particular how we went from there being nothing at all to there being something, and then how a little of that something turned into us, and also some of what happened in between and since."
This quote essentially sums up the entire premise of the book. This explanation is prefaced by a handful of paragraphs noting the significance of the atomic structure of the entire universe. The entire history of the known universe traces down to the atomic level. The foundation being laid at this point of the narrative is that history and atoms are inextricably combined. The key element in this passage is easy to overlook, that the universe is a story of there being nothing at all transforming into being everything. The universe and atoms are not inextricably combined. The universe actually existed for quite some time without the presence of atoms. This fact may be why the book is a history of nearly everything rather than absolutely everything.
"We are, to an almost uncanny degree, the right distance from the right sort of star, one that is big enough to radiate lots of energy, but not so big as to burn itself out swiftly. It is a curiosity of physics that the larger a star the more rapidly it burns. Had our sun been ten times as massive, it would have exhausted itself after ten million years instead of ten billion and we wouldn't be here now."
This quote is indicative of the history of nearly everything as a whole. The conditions which allowed for life to develop on earth are so precise that they indicate either an intelligent design or an almost statistically improbable series of random coincidences. This paragraph situates life on earth as being impossible had the sun been a bigger star or earth been closer or farther away from the sun as it is. This sense of perfection of conditions is a running theme throughout the book. The history of the planet and the evolution of species has been ominously dependent upon a series of uncannily fortunate conditions. It is not just earth as an inhabitable planet that seems to be the recipient of a great deal of luck, but the human species itself. This concept of luck is juxtaposed against the development over time of perfectly modulated organisms to suggest that the evolution of everything on earth may have come within almost a single moment of never happening at all.
"Most of what has lived on Earth has left behind no record at all. It has been estimated that less than one species in ten thousand has made it into the fossil record."
The ancient existence of dinosaurs has been known to humans for only a few hundred years. This knowledge came about through the discovery of fossilized bones. Today, of course, dinosaurs dominate pop culture in a variety of ways. What this quote is suggesting is twofold. On the one hand, humans might well have lived forever without ever knowing about dinosaurs. Secondly, humans remain completely unaware of the existence of an unknown number of ancient species which may at one time have ruled the planet like dinosaurs are assumed to have done. The assertion being made here is that we still live in an unfathomable fog of ignorance about the history of nearly everything. In fact, the subtext of this quote is that what is known about the history of earth—much less the entire rest of the universe—is as infinitesimal in comparison to what is not known as the number of known species is compared to those that remain unknown.
