“Actually—and this was where I began to feel seriously uncomfortable—some such divine claim underlay not just 'the occupation' but the whole idea of a separate state for Jews in Palestine. Take away the divine warrant for the Holy Land and where were you, and what were you? Just another land-thief like the Turks or the British, except that in this case you wanted the land without the people. And the original Zionist slogan—'a land without a people for a people without a land'—disclosed its own negation when I saw the densely populated Arab towns dwelling sullenly under Jewish tutelage. You want irony? How about Jews becoming colonizers at just the moment when other Europeans had given up on the idea?”

“In Palestine, the Israelis claim they found a land without people,' a Syrian officer explained to us. 'Now they will take southern Lebanon and claim they have found another land without people if these refugees do not return.”

“After the Jews crossed the sea and the desert, they reached the Promised Land. Scouts were sent to look at the land before settling. When the scouts came back, they reported that the people in the land were giants. “We looked at them and they looked at us as if we were grasshoppers,” they said. Sometimes when we make a decision to make a change in our lives, we feel just like those scouts. However, if you pay attention to the words of the Bible, it was not the giants living in the land of Israel who believed that the Jews looked like grasshoppers. It was the Jews’ own perception. When they looked at the giants, they believed they were the grasshoppers.”

“Livy: Don’t you ever wonder what else is out there…beyond the farm?Ray: SometimesLivy: Aren’t you curious how other people lived?Ray: I enjoyed the drive, but i like coming back to my place. Sleeping on my land.Livy: Your land. Ha! Seems every war in human history is about owning a land. I liked the Indian view that we’re just temporary guardians of the land where we lived.Ray: It’s not temporary to me.Livy: But your family just owned this land for less than a hundred years. In a span of a history that’s nothing. Ray: In a span of a life…that’s near everything.”

“a park ranger is a protector. You protect the land from the people, the people from the land, the people from each other, and the people from themselves. It's what you are trained to do without even thinking, a reflexive and unconditional act. If you're lucky, you get assigned to people who seem worth saving and land and waters whose situation is not hopeless. If not, you save them anyway. And maybe in time, saving them will make them worth it.”

“When you jump off a cliff, is it better to land on jagged rocks or burning lava? I know this one. The answer is obvious: It doesn't matter where you land. You just jumped off a cliff.”