“Of all the components of the ecosystem, humans are the only ones we know to be completely optional.”

“One species on the planet, and one species only, has reached the point of being able to have an impact on the evolutionary fortunes of all other species and upon the functioning of all ecosystems. We also have, in a way that is not true for any other species, a relationship to the planet as a whole and to the future. We live with all life.”

“Daddy always said that an option that you know to have a bad outcome is only a fool's option, i.e., not an option at all. And I liked to think that Daddy hadn't raised a fool.”

“While it is relatively easy to recognize the perennial grasses and seed-eating sparrows as characteristic of meadows, the ecosystems exist in their fullest sense underground. What we see aboveground is only the outer margin of an ecosystem that explodes in intricacy and life below.”

“It would be frightening to think that in all the cosmos, which is so harmonious, so complete and equal to itself, that only human life is happening randomly, that only one's destiny lacks meaning.”

“We often think that when we have completed our study of one we know all about two, because 'two' is 'one and one'. We forget that we have still to make a study of 'and'.”