“On Sundays, the pretending felt almost as natural as nature. The chapel was our favorite place. Long before we could understand what the priest was saying, the music instructed us in how to feel.”

“Nature is our chapel. ”

“The Moon rules our emotional nature, how we react in situations, and what is needed in our lives to make us feel emotionally safe and secure.”

“Then we were quiet. Quiet isn’t easy. Especially with virtual strangers. They say that nature hates a vacuum, and so it’s kind of natural to want to fill up a human silence with words—any kind of lame words. But there was such a feeling of space around us that my first self-conscious word died long before I ever felt it on my tongue.”

“No other life forms know they are alive, and neither do they know they will die. This is our curse alone. Without this hex upon our heads, we would never have withdrawn as far as we have from the natural—so far and for such a time that it is a relief to say what we have been trying with our all not to say: We have long since been denizens of the natural world. Everywhere around us are natural habitats, but within us is the shiver of startling and dreadful things. Simply put: We are not from here. If we vanished tomorrow, no organism on this planet would miss us. Nothing in nature needs us.”

“We often forget that WE ARE NATURE. Nature is not something separate from us. So when we say that we have lost our connection to nature, we’ve lost our connection to ourselves.”