鈥淚 do actually get a chance to touch the Hubble and I can hug it when I get up there.鈥�
Many fans of the Hubble Space Telescope call themselves 鈥淗ubble huggers鈥�, including NASA astronaut Mike Massimino, who is due to lift off on 12 May on a mission to help upgrade the telescope (Space.com, 13 April)
鈥淚t is frightening. We can鈥檛 go on as we have been. We are seeing the consequences in terms of ecology, pollution, space and food production.鈥�
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Broadcaster David Attenborough on becoming a patron of the Optimum Population Trust, which campaigns to limit the number of people in the world (The Times, London, 14 April)
鈥淭he things we went through to get here. I was able to create a new life.鈥�
Chris Biblis from North Carolina, on the birth of his daughter Stella from his sperm frozen a record 22 years ago, before he underwent chemotherapy for leukaemia (ABC News, 10 April)
鈥淚 can鈥檛 tell you how many people have spent the night in their bathtubs because they are so freaked out by bedbugs.鈥�
Dini Miller, an entomologist at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, on the resurgence in bedbugs prompting the US Environmental Protection Agency to host its first ever bedbug summit (Associated Press, 14 April)
鈥淭he loss of forest elephants on the functionality of central African forests might be comparable to the loss of all vehicles for the functionality of Manhattan.鈥�
Stephen Blake, whose team at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology found that elephants in the Congo basin disperse the seeds of 96 plant species (mongabay.com, 9 April)