“Traditional agriculture was labour intensive, industrial agriculture is energy intensive, and permaculture-designed systems are information and design intensive.”

“re: the US agriculture industry: " This puts us in the odd position of consuming fossil fuels --geologically one of the rarest and most useful resources ever discovered-- to provide a substitute for dirt --the cheapest and most widely available agricultural input imaginable.”

“Charity is a very labour-intensive virtue.”

“Food-- like sex, politics, and religion-- is an intensely personal, emotional, and complicated subject.”

“And maybe it is only by finding yourself that you can feel the true intensity of becoming close to another person.”

“I want that. I want that awful intense and serious unhappiness, cos then I might feel better, and then I might be happy.”

“The planting of [orchards] represents a reduction of a complex ecology into the monocultural grid of modern agriculture, and the transformation of a complex symbiosis with the land into the simpler piecework or agricultural labour for surplus and export.”