“I push the big red button,and it doesn`t work!”

“You and I know how to stay alive in an urban community. As humans, we are genetically encoded to adapt to many environments when given proper teaching from more experienced humans. We know not to talk to strangers, not to cross on the red light, and not to leave the doors unlocked. Most of us are more or less successful and only occasionally make a life-threatening mistake. Some of us may have an additional set of survival skills, depending on our circumstances. We can live with a debilitating disease, be shot into space and live in a capsule, or survive summer camp. After summer camp, we are still the same people we were before summer camp, except now we know write our name in our underware, not chew gum found under the bed, and to stay away from things that look like sticks but are, in fact, snakes.”

“At home I have a blue piano.But I can’t play a note.It’s been in the shadow of the cellar doorEver since the world went rotten.Four starry hands play harmonies,The Woman in the Moon sang in her boat.Now only rats dance to the clanks.The keyboard is in bits.I wept for what is blue. Is dead.Sweet angels, I have eatenSuch bitter bread. Push openThe door of heaven. For me, for now-Although I am still alive-Although it is not allowed”

“Das Menschenherz ist wie das Erdreich, oft hart und spröde. Man muß darin den Samen der Liebe säen, sie mit Geduld hegen und pflegen wie jede andere Pflanze, daß sie dort Wurzeln schlägt und gedeiht.”

“I'm too old to figure out the rights and wrongs of everything.”

“The self-aggrandizing and widespread assumption that we humans have the full complement of all of the emotions possible to all animals on Earth–basically, that all the marbles belong to us–is not only unscientific but also childish. Do we know how it feel is sail on an updraft in the sky, to echolocate our dinner in the dark, or to see at lightning speed with a compound eye? Fortunately, human understanding is maturing, and we are learning that animals are emotional, thinking, and self-aware beings relative to the niche that they were born to occupy.”

“He's a bully. I love bullies. They have such big, shiny red buttons to push.”