“Something was comforting about strangers—it seemed like they would exist forever as the same, unknowable mass.”

“But there was something else. A feeling of understanding, a comfort that defied reason. It was as though kissing her, a near stranger, would have made all the sense in the world.”

“My very existence, my life in the world, seemed like a hallucination. A strong wind would make me think my body was about to be blown to the end of the earth, to some land I had never seen or heard of, where my mind and body would separate forever. “Hold tight,” I would tell myself, but there was nothing for me to hold on to.”

“Ecology, like genetics, is not about equilibrium states. It is about change, change and change. Nothing stays the same forever.”

“He experienced a familiar comfort being in the presence of another person's unknowable pain. More than any landscape, this place felt like home.”

“Uncomfortable.Lord. I’ve been doing the comfortable thing my whole life, it seems like. And what did it get me? I think it’s about time I did something a little uncomfortable.”