“In a world where no creatures are truly isolated and diseases spread around as fast as jets can fly, we are all canaries and the entire planet is our coal mine. Any species can be a sentinel of danger—-but only if the widest array of health--care professionals is paying attention.”

“Our essential connection with animals is ancient, and it runs deep. It extends from body to behavior, from psychology to society—forming the basis of our daily journey of survival. This calls for physicians and patients to think beyond the human bedside to barnyards, jungles, oceans, and skies. Because the fate of our world’s health doesn’t depend solely on how we humans fare. Rather it will be determined by how all the patients on the planet live, grow, get sick, and heal.”

“Conception is not some genteel, quiet pastime; it’s a fierce and unforgiving team sport.”

“You weren’t in any real danger. We knew exactly where you were all the time.”

“We live in a world with so many dangers that we have to be careful whom we trust.”

“Time can fly as fast as it wants, but they will take their pleasant time about living.”

“People need wild places. Whether or not we think we do, we do. We need to be able to taste grace and know again that we desire it. We need to experience a landscape that is timeless, whose agenda moves at the pace of speciation and glaciers. To be surrounded by a singing, mating, howling commotion of other species, all of which love their lives as much as we do ours, and none of which could possibly care less about us in our place. It reminds us that our plans are small and somewhat absurd. It reminds us why, in those cases in which our plans might influence many future generations, we ought to choose carefully. Looking out on a clean plank of planet earth, we can get shaken right down to the bone by the bronze-eyed possibility of lives that are not our own.”